Edward Albee was born in 1928 in the Washington, D.C. area. He was very open about the fact that he was adopted shortly after his birth by a wealthy family from Westchester, New York and that he chafed at the conservative values of his parents, Reed and Frances Albee. His family's wealth came from running a chain of vaudeville theaters, and Albee was exposed to a wide range of culture and education as a child. He was expelled from three private preparatory schools before graduating from a fourth; he was also expelled from college during his second year, which led to a twenty-year rift between himself and his parents.
Albee moved to Greenwich Village, a then-bohemian neighborhood in New...
