Originally intended to be part of a nine-play cycle entitled A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed, Mansions was an incomplete rough draft written between 1936 and 1939 that O'Neill did not want posthumously finished or produced. A sequel to A Touch of the Poet, it picks up four years later in 1832 Massachusetts, with Simon Harford, now married to Sara Melody, finding himself the pawn in a battle between his wife and his mother to control him through love. Played out against the background of an industrial revolution, the struggle ultimately leads to tragedy and despair.