Long Day’s Journey into Night was published by Yale University Press in 1956, three years after O’Neill’s death. He completed it in 1941 and instructed his wife Carlotta that it not be published until twenty-five years after his death. She overrode this instruction. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1957 — O’Neill’s fourth.
The Tyrone family occupies a single day in August 1912 at their summer house in New London, Connecticut: James Tyrone Sr., a once-great actor who sacrificed his talent for the security of a commercial melodrama he performed thousands of times; Mary, his wife, who is relapsing into the morphine addiction that began when a cheap doctor prescribed it after the birth of their third son; Jamie, the elder son, an alcoholic failed actor consumed by jealousy of his brother; and Edmund (transparently O’Neill himself), the younger son, a would-be writer just diagnosed with tuberculosis.
The play has no plot in the conventional sense — it is simply one day during which the family’s defenses erode. Morning begins with hope (Mary seems well), and by midnight all pretense has collapsed: Mary is lost in morphine, dragging her wedding dress through the house; James has confessed his artistic cowardice; Jamie has admitted he wants Edmund to fail; and Edmund has accepted that his family’s love is inseparable from its destructiveness.
Collecting Long Day’s Journey into Night
First edition (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1956): Cloth boards, no dust jacket (issued in printed boards). Limited edition of 12 copies hand-bound in leather preceded the trade edition.
Market values:
- Trade first edition, fine: $200–$500
- Limited edition (12 copies): $5,000–$15,000
- First British edition (Cape, 1956): $50–$150
Projected values (2026–2036): Very strong appreciation. O’Neill’s masterpiece.
The American Family Tragedy
Long Day’s Journey into Night (completed 1941, published 1956) is widely considered the greatest American play — an autobiographical drama set in a single day in the summer of 1912, in which the four members of the Tyrone family (transparently the O’Neills) confront their addictions, resentments, and failures while the mother, Mary, sinks back into morphine. O’Neill wrote it “in tears and blood” and instructed his wife Carlotta to withhold publication until twenty-five years after his death; she violated his wishes and published it in 1956, three years after he died. The Yale University Press first edition is the primary collecting target. The limited edition of twelve copies is virtually unobtainable.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Eugene O’Neill? O’Neill (1888–1953) was the founding figure of serious American drama and the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1936). He won four Pulitzer Prizes. His plays — raw, ambitious, and drawn from his own tormented life — transformed American theatre from entertainment into art.