Ah, Wilderness!, originally produced in 1933, is unique in the body of Eugene O’Neill’s work, as a pleasant new England folk comedy, an idyll entirely removed from O’Neill’s tragic vision of life. All God’s Chillun Got Wings, on the other hand, produced originally in 1924, is one of the most intense and searching representations ever written of relations between Negroes and whites. With the New York production of Beyond the Horizon in 1920, O’Neill became recognized as the foremost creative American playwright of his generation. A naturalistic study of tragic frustration, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for that year—the first of a series of awards made to the author which culminated in the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936.
About the Author
Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) is one of the most significant forces in the history of American theater. With no uniquely American tradition to guide him, O'Neill introduced various dramatic techniques, which subsequently became staples of the U.S. theater. By 1914 he had written twelve one-act and two long plays. Of this early work, only Thirst and Other One-act plays (1914) was originally published. From this point on, O'Neill's work falls roughly into three phases: the early plays, written from 1914 to 1921 (The Long Voyage Home, The Moon of the Caribbees, Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie); a variety of full-length plays for Broadway (Desire Under the Elms; Great God Brown; Ah, Wilderness!); and the last, great plays, written between 1938 and his death (The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten). Eugene O'Neill is a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1936.
