Contour in Time The Plays of Eugene O'Neill [Hardcover]

Eugene O'Neill, one of America's most gifted and prolific playwrights, wrote more than 60 plays between 1914 and 1941, a level of creativity paralleled in modern times only by Bernard Shaw. The progress of his art from crude, one-act plays to the monumental tragedies of his later years is a story as dramatic and compelling as that of his tortured personal history. Combining the two, Professor Bogard traces the contours of O'Neill's life in his art. By discussing, in their approximate order of composition, the published and unpublished works, Bogard illuminates not only the plays, but also the literary, aesthetic, and historical influences on the playwright's development. For the revised edition of this insightful, meticulously written work, the author has added new and unpublished material onA Tale of Possessors, Self-dispossessed, a cycle of nine plays written by O'Neill during the 1930s and '40s, only one of which he readied for the stage. Among the plays in this cycle that have been posthumously produced areMore Stately Mansions(New York, 1967) andA Touch of the Poet(New York, 1958).

A classic.... [The final chapter], a masterpiece of compression...draws together innumerable facets of the dramatist's life and work and shows how [A Long Day's Journey into Night] achieves an illumination through pain that may have been O'Neill's salvation. --The New York Times Book Review

Travis Bogard, Professor Emeritus of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Berkeley, has co-edited several volumes of Eugene O'Neill's letters and is editing the forthcomingComplete Works of Eugene O'Neill.He was awarded a Gold Medal from The Theater Committee on Eugene O'Neill in 1984.