A bleak work set in a historical world of dark realism, a recognized masterpiece by one of the most important writers of his kind in the twentieth century.

The Saloon of Harry Hope is a seaside bar filled with life's failures. They are almost alive, living with the knowledge that love is a chemistry and despair is constant. Their desires for an impossible future are only dreams away because the only thing they have to look forward to is death. And then one day Hickey appears with his personal hope and the need to make them face the truth.

Written in 1939, Eugene O'Neill's work, "The Iceman Cometh," premiered at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York, in October 1946. Its British premiere took place at the Arts Theatre in London, in January 1958.

"A dramatized neurosis, without limitations, written with a tone of relentless honesty" – Kenneth Tynan

"O'Neill, the great patriarch of Broadway and the playwright who has defined the map on which all modern American drama is written – 'The Iceman Cometh' is the first truly great epic of modern American theater, and its legacy is the intimate baring of the soul that we now take for granted in drama worldwide" – Sheridan Morley

This edition of "The Iceman Cometh" contains a full introduction, biography, and timeline.