The Cambridge Companion to Eugene O’Neill

Michael Manheim writes in his preface to The Cambridge Companion to Eugene O’Neill that the volume “attempts to be comprehensive without ignoring more specialised approaches to the playwright”. There are 16 essays divided into four sections. The first section consists of three background discussions. Stephen A. Black’s “Celebrant of loss: Eugene O’Neill 1888‐1953” focusses upon the dramatist’s childhood, and his home life. O’Neill’s intellectual and artistic development is the interest of Egil Tornqvist’s “O’Neill’s philosophical and literary paragons”. This discussion of the impact on O’Neill of Nietzsche, Ibsen and Strindberg amongst others is regrettably too short. Daniel J. Waltermeier in...