When Eugene O'Neill moved to Danville in 1937, he had already begun work on an eleven-play cycle titled A Tale of Possessors, Self-Dispossessed, meant to trace the life of an American family over more than a century, but the scale of the project proved daunting, and he completed only A Touch of the Poet and a lengthy draft of its sequel, More Stately Mansions. He then turned from that cycle to memories of his family's complex emotional life and of years spent on the waterfront in New York City, writing in quick order The Iceman Cometh, Hughie, Long Day's Journey into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. This intense labor was painful emotionally and physically, and while suffering from bouts of depression and a severe tremor of the hands, he was able to complete what would be his final plays only with Carlotta's assistance.