Beckett, Samuel (bĕk`ĭt), 1906–89, Anglo-French playwright and novelist, b. Dublin. Beckett studied and taught in Paris before settling there permanently in 1937. He wrote primarily in French, frequently translating his works into English himself. His first published novel, Murphy (1938), typifies his later works by eliminating the traditional elements of plot, character, and setting. Instead, he presents the experience of waiting and struggling with a pervading sense of futility. The anguish of persisting in a meaningless world is intensified in Beckett's subsequent novels including Watt (1942–44); the trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), and The Unnamable (1953); How It Is (1961); and The Lost Ones (1972). In his theater of the absurd, Beckett combined poignant humor with an overwhelming sense of anguish and loss. Best known and most controversial of his dramas are Waiting for Godot (1952) and Endgame (1957), which have been performed throughout the world. Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Beckett's other works include a major study of Proust (1931); the plays Krapp's Last Tape (1959) and Happy Days (1961); a screenplay, Film (1969); short stories, Breath (1966) and Lessness (1970); collected shorter prose in Stories and Texts for Nothing (tr. 1967), No's Knife (1967), and The Complete Short Prose: 1929–1989 (1996, ed. by S. E. Gontarski); volumes of collected writings, More Pricks than Kicks (1970) and First Love and Other Shorts (1974); and Poems (1963). His Collected Works (16 vol.) was published in 1970 and a comprehensive centenary edition (5 vol.) was published in 2006. Beckett's first works of fiction and drama were both published posthumously, the novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1932) in 1992 and the play Eleuthéria (1947) in 1995.

Bibliography

See biographies by D. Bair (1980), J. Knowlson (1996), and A. Cronin (1997); J. and E. Knowlson, Beckett Remembering/Remembering Beckett: A Centenary Celebration (2006); memoir, How It Was (2006) by A. Atik; studies by H. Kenner (1968 and 1973), R. Cohn (1972 and 1973), S. Connor (1986), P. Gidal (1986), R. Pountney (1988), L. Gordon (1996), J. D. O'Hara (1998), and A Uhlmann and S. E. Gontarski, ed. (2006).

Beckett, Samuel (Barclay)

Samuel Beckett, 1965.

(born April 13?, 1906, Foxrock, Co. Dublin, Ire.—died Dec. 22, 1989, Paris, France) Irish playwright. After studying in Ireland and traveling, he settled in Paris in 1937. During World War II he supported himself as a farmworker and joined the underground resistance. In the postwar years he wrote, in French, the narrative trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), and The Unnamable (1953). His play Waiting for Godot (1952) was an immediate success in Paris and gained worldwide acclaim when he translated it into English. Marked by minimal plot and action, existentialist ideas, and humour, it typifies the Theatre of the Absurd. His later plays, also sparsely staged, abstract works that deal with the mystery and despair of human existence, include Endgame (1957), Krapp's Last Tape (1958), and Happy Days (1961). In 1969 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.