Poems, 1912-1944 - Hardcover

In 1912, when Eugene O'Neill was twenty-four and contributing a column called "Laconics" to the New London Telegraph, his verses made apologies to the likes of James Whitcomb Riley, Longfellow, Masefield and Burns, and concerned themselves with baseball, the Bull Moose Party, and other topical matters which afforded his humor a chance to entertain his home-town readers.

Later, as he languished in the Gaylord Sanatorium recovering from tuberculosis, fell in love with Beatrice Ashe, married and divorced Agnes Boulton, and finally met and wed Carlotta Monterey, O'Neill's poetry turned real and beautiful.

A number of these writings have remained locked away in the Yale Library, the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, and the University of Virginia Library. Carlotta Monterey O'Neill restricted their availability during his and her lifetimes. Now, under the expert hand of Donald C. Gallup, they are brought together for the first time in this collected edition.

Their publication is an interesting American literary event. Ticknor & Fields is pleased to have this privilege.

American playwright Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) was awarded the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for his drama.

Editor Donald C. Gallup (1913-2000) was a noted bibliographer, editor and art and book collector who spent more than three decades as a library curator at Yale. During his 33-year career as a curator, he helped establish Yale as a leading center for the study of 20th-century American literature by bringing to the University collections of the books, letters, papers and manuscripts of such noted writers as Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Eugene O'Neill and Thornton Wilder, among many others.