A portrait of a genius One of America's finest playwrights, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill's great tragedies were greatly influenced by his experiences with his dysfunctional family. He used these events to create one of the most successful careers of the early 20th century, earning countless awards including the Nobel Prize in Literature, four Pulitzer Prizes, the Antoinette Perry Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. From all these Greek-style tragedies emerged his only comedy, Ah, Wilderness!; a period piece set in his summer home in New London, CT. O'Neill referred to this work as "the other side of the coin", meaning that it represented his fantasy of what his youth might have been, rather than what he believed it had been (as seen in his work magnum, Long Journey of the day into the night). These two plays are his two most autobiographical works, Long Day's Journey which dramatizes his family and Ah, Wilderness! parallel to it. Born in a Broadway hotel room on October 16, 1888, Eugene O'Neill was the second son of James and Ella O'Neill. Both Irish immigrants and devout Catholics, James was an actor best known for his portrayal of Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo, a production which ran for over 6,000 performances. He later lamented that "this long slavery to one role had prevented him from attaching his name to Hamlet in the memory of mankind" (Durant, 49). His brother Jamie, ten years his senior, was brilliant but erratic. Her birth was particularly difficult for Ella, so a doctor prescribed morphine to ease the pain. She and Eugene followed James on tour for several years, sometimes assisting him from behind the scenes. In 1895 Eugene returned to New York to attend Mt. St. Vincent boarding school and later the De La Salle Institute. During these years, his family spent summers at Monte Cristo Cottage in New London, Connecticut. When Eugene was 13, he discovered that his mother had become addicted to morphine due to the pain following his birth. Furthermore, he had learned that his brother was an alcoholic. These two events haunted him for years to come and greatly influenced his writing and drinking problems later in life. During this period he also became interested in the controversial work of writers such as Ibsen, Shaw, Wilde, Nietzsche and Swinburne. Eugene attended Princeton University for a year, but when he was suspended due to drunken behavior he chose not to return to school.