Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-159) and index.

"The vast difference in the quality of the plays written by Eugene O'Neill during his thirty-year career as a dramatist (1913-43) has evoked considerable wonder among critics. The fact is, nothing in O'Neill's forty-five theatrical endeavors of varying merit prior to 1939 suggests the unmistakable touch of genius which radiates from his last plays - A Touch of the Poet (1939), The Iceman Cometh (1940), Long Day's Journey into Night (1941), Hughie (1942), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943)." "At least one valid explanation for this phenomenon is the greatly improved endings of the late plays." "To date no one has attempted to account for the disparity in quality between O'Neill's earlier and late work by means of a thorough examination of his play-endings. In "Perverse Mind" author Barbara Voglino performs this long-neglected function concerning the work of the artist considered by many to be America's foremost dramatist by studying nine plays - three from approximately each decade of O'Neill's career - in the light of contemporary closure theories."--Jacket.

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