How much of Long Days Journey Into Night is autobiographical?
The play is a portrait of O’Neill’s own family. Many but not all of the details correspond exactly. O’Neill’s father, James O’Neill, was, like Tyrone in the play, the son of an Irish immigrant. He was also an accomplished actor who was famous for his role as the Count in The Count of Monte Cristo, which in the play Tyrone refers to (without naming it) as bringing him financial success but artistic sterility. O’Neill’s mother, Ellen Quinlan O’Neill was, like Mary Tyrone, educated in a convent. She later became addicted to morphine, which became a source of emotional pain to Eugene O’Neill (as it is to Edmund in the play). As in the play, O’Neill’s brother, Jamie, was an alcoholic, who would die of alcoholism in 1923. The character of Edmund is based on O’Neill himself. Like Edmund, O’Neill was a rebellious, turbulent young man who sailed to Argentina and lived rough there. Also like Edmund, he later tried to commit suicide, and in 1912 he got a job on a local newspaper. He also contract
