Table of Contents

Restrictions on access

Unrestricted access.

Terms Governing Use and Reproduction

All requests subject to limitations noted in departmental policies on reproduction.

Related Materials in This Repository

Irish Literary miscellany collection, Derek Mahon papers, Charles Monteith collection, Desmond O'Grady papers, and James Simmons papers.

Source

Purchase, 2001.

Citation

[after identification of item(s)], Samuel Beckett collection, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

Biographical Note

Samuel Beckett was born at Foxrock, near Dublin, Ireland on April 13, 1906. After studying modern French and Italian literature at Trinity College in Dublin, he worked as a lecturer in Belfast, Paris and Dublin from 1928 to 1931. His early works include Whoroscope, a poem (1929); Proust, a critical study (1931); More Kicks than Pricks, short stories (1934); Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates, verse (1935) and Murphy, his first novel (1938).

From 1932 to 1934 Beckett resided in London and traveled extensively in Germany in 1936-1937. He settled in Paris at the end of 1937. In Paris Beckett was involved with the French resistance movement and had to flee from the Gestapo. In the fall of 1942 he arrived in an isolated region of southeast France near Roussillon and spent the next few years working as a farmhand. In Paris between the end of the war and 1950, he wrote three novels and while he waited for them to be accepted for publication, he wrote a play. The novels were Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. The play was En Attendant Godot; Waiting for Godot, first published in 1952. It was produced in Paris the following year, and was an immediate success and has been translated into twenty languages and performed throughout the world.

Poet novelist and playwright, Beckett remains most widely celebrated for his dramas, some written in French, others in English. Among his other works for the theater are Endgame and All that Fall (1957); Krapp's Last Tape, Act Without Words I and II and Embers (1959); Happy Days (1961); Eh Joe (1966); Not I (1972); That Time and Footfalls (1976). Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. A translation of the official citation from the Swedish Academy reads: "Beckett has exposed the misery of our times through new dramatic and literary forms. His muted minor tone holds liberation for the oppressed and comfort for the distressed." Samuel Beckett died in Paris on December 22, 1989.

Scope and Content Note

The Samuel Beckett collection contains handbills, playbills, programs, ticket stubs, articles and artwork spanning the years 1955-1996. Many of the items are from United Kingdom production's of Beckett's dramatic work.

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Selected Search Terms

Topical Terms

Dramatists, Irish--20th century.

English drama--Irish authors--20th century.

Irish drama--20th century.

Theater--Ireland--20th century.

Geographic Names

Ireland--Drama--20th century.

Form/Genre Terms

Handbills.

Playbills.

Theater programs.

Occupation

Dramatist.