Yale library acquires 'lost' Eugene O'Neill script

Hartford (AP) — A recently discovered manuscript by Eugene O'Neill that's based on a suicide attempt by the playwright has been acquired by a library at Yale University.

All copies of the one-act play, "Exorcism," were assumed to be lost until a researcher sifting through another writer's papers discovered the manuscript earlier this year.

O'Neill, who died in 1953, is the only American playwright to receive the Nobel Prize for literature.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale purchased the script for an undisclosed amount. Curator Louise Bernard says the play set in 1912 intimates the overwhelming role that suicide would take in O'Neill's personal life.

The play appears in the Oct. 17 issue of The New Yorker magazine and will be published next year by the Yale University Press.