Happy Birthday, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

I am much more familiar with the life and works of Eugene O'Neill. For one thing, he lived not more than 6 miles from where I live in Danville, California. He spent his last productive years here when he wrote his greatest works.

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was a Nobel-prize winning American playwright. More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced American drama to the dramatic realism pioneered by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg, and was the first to use true American vernacular in his speeches. His plays involve characters who inhabit the fringes of society, engaging in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote only one comedy (Ah, Wilderness!): all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1936/oneill-autobio.html