Born in 1928, Albee was adopted by Reed and Frances Albee, a wealthy couple involved in the theater. He was a precocious writer, composing poetry at the age of six and a play at twelve. As a teenager, he left home when his parents disapproved of his sexual preference; this confrontation would appear later in his plays, in particular Three Tall Women.

Albee's first one-act play, The Zoo Story, (1958), garnered comparisons with the works of Tennessee Williams and Eugene lonesco. Subsequent works such as The Death of Bessie Smith (1960), The Sandbox (1960), and The American Dream (1962) earned Albee a place among the top avant-garde writers of the day.

Without doubt, Albee's best-known work is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962). In this three-act drama, a middle-aged, hard-drinking couple argues and complains about their miserable lives. Critics suggested autobiographical motives in Albee's depiction of George and Martha, the feuding husband...