Life
Irish-American playwright; son of James O’Neill, actor; and Mary
(née) Quinlan; raised in “Monte Cristo Cottage”, 325
Pequod Ave., New London, nr. US 1, Connecticut, named after his father’s
best-known rôle was in the stage-version of that work; his mother
was addicted to morphine provided by a doctor asa sedative after Eugene’s
birth, giving rise to the famous scene in Long Day’s Journey into
Night where Mary Tyrone attempts to throw herself into the neary river;
Edmund Tyrone, the author’s alter ego in the play, is named after
a brother dead in infancy; see Edward L. Shaughnessy, The Critical
Reception in Ireland (Greenwood Press 1988), 248pp.
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