Long Day's Journey into Night

Long Day's Journey into Night is rightly regarded as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, by a founding father of American theatre.  It was finished in 1941, 13 years after O'Neill's last Pulitzer Prize and five years after his Nobel Prize for Literature.  Unashamedly autobiographical, he allowed publication only after his death - the first work for which a Pulitzer Prize was granted posthumously, in 1957.  

He described this highly personal piece as a 'play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood'.  The play covers a day in the life of the Tyrone's at their Connecticut summer residence.  O'Neill recreates his own family with fearless honesty:  fragile mother; ex-matinee-idol father;  cynical, Broadway-bred brother; and himself, young, ill, before he found his artistic voice.  Over the day he exposes their terrible secrets and rarely spoken, binding love, facing his dead 'with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all four haunted Tyrones'.