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Eugene O’Neill’s Writing Trajectory and Evolution A general introduction of his life and his main works Eugene Gladstone O’Neill was born on Oct.16, 1888, in New York City. His father was a well-known actor. As a child O’Neill travelled with his father’s company until he was 7, in which time he was cared for by nanny, hired to help his mother who was not recovering from her addition to morphine. The nanny took young Eugene to see the sights wherever they travelled. At seven he had a wider acquaintance with the natural wonders and oddities of America than most Americans ever acquire. All the while Eugene absorbed the grammar of theatrical artifice, a native language. At seven he went to a private school, a Catholic school, he remained in that kind of school until he was thirteen. In 1906 he entered Princeton but left at the end of his freshman year. O’Neill drifted for several years. He went to Honduras and then worked as a seaman travelling to Africa and to South America. He finally took a job as a reporter for the New London Telegraph in Connecticut. The years of irregular living, combined with heavy drinking, had undermined his health, and in 1912 he entered a tuberculosis sanatorium. During his illness O’Neill read the works of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg and decided to try writing plays. In 1914-15 he studied dramatic writing with George Pierce Baker at Harvard. He wrote the one-act plays that were presented by the Provincetown Players in Massachusetts. The company moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, where it formed the Playwrights Theater. It opened in 1916, and the first bill included O’Neill’s Bound East for Cardiff, his New York debut. This play and three others – In the Zone, The Long Voyage Home, and The Moon of the Caribbees, based on O’Neill’s experiences at sea – were produced together in 1924 as S.S.Glencairn. The immediate success of these short plays established O’Neill’s reputation. In 1920 O’Neill’s first full-length play, Beyond th