It was because Long Day's Journey into Night was so transparently autobiographical that Eugene O'Neill forbade the play's production and publication during his lifetime. The main characters are thinly veiled portraits of his father, James, his mother, Ella, his brother, Jamie, and himself.

James Gladstone O'Neill was born on October 6, 1888, in a Broadway hotel, son to the popular actor, James O'Neill, and Ella Quinlan. He was raised in the world of theater, and, as a result, in his boyhood and teen years he traveled all over America.

At eighteen, O'Neill entered Princeton but was expelled for a drunken prank and "general hell-raising." Thereafter he drifted. He served briefly as a business firm clerk, tried his hand at gold prospecting in Central America, and finally signed on a ship as an ordinary seaman in the Atlantic trade routes. After three years of wandering, he returned to New...