When Eugene O'Neill was conferred the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936, the award committee praised "the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions" of the American playwright's dramatic works, which remain topical and preserve their resonance to this day.

This extensive selection includes six of O'Neill's most famous and performed works for the stage, from the early one-act play Bound East for Cardiff and the 1920 tragedy The Emperor Jones, to the expressionist play The Hairy Ape, first produced in 1922, through to the dramatic masterpieces of his mature period in the 1930s and 1940s: Mourning Becomes Electra, The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night. Together, these plays cement O'Neill's place as one of the foremost realist playwrights, alongside Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov.