Based on original manuscripts of the O'Neill collection at Yale University, Floyd has annotated the O'Neill notebooks dating from 1918 to 1943. This newly released material shows O'Neill's development from amateur to craftsman to creative artist. From one-acters to multi-act plays and the unfinished Cycle, O'Neill is seen as striving to incorporate experimental techniques, while building his plays out of his own remembrances of family and friends and out of the terrors of a world on the threshold of war.