"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)."--BOOK JACKET. "At least one valid explanation for this phenomenon is the greatly improved endings of the late plays."--BOOK JACKET.

"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."--BOOK JACKET.