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, tracing 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 the 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. The work came through intense emotional and physical pain, as bouts of depression and a severe tremor of the hands made writing difficult, and only with Carlotta Monterey O'Neill's assistance was he able to complete what would be his final plays.