Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett (/ˈbɛkɪt/; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. His work became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream of consciousness repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd.

Books in order of publication:

Novels

  • Dream of Fair to Middling Women (written 1932; published 1992)
  • Murphy (1938); 1947 Beckett’s French version
  • Watt (1953); 1968, Beckett’s French version
  • Comment c’est (1961);
  •  How It Is (1964)
  • Mercier and Camier (written 1946, published 1970); English translation (1974)

Theatre

  • Human Wishes (c. 1936; published 1984)
  • Eleutheria (written 1947 in French; published in French 1995, and English 1996)
  • En attendant Godot (published 1952, performed 1953) (Waiting for Godot, pub. 1954, perf. 1955)
  • Acte sans Paroles I (1956); Act Without Words I (1957)
  • Acte sans Paroles II (1956); Act Without Words II (1957)
  • Fin de partie (published 1957); Endgame (published 1957)
  • Krapp’s Last Tape (first performed 1958)
  • Fragment de théâtre I (late 1950s); Rough for Theatre I
  • Fragment de théâtre II (late 1950s); Rough for Theatre II
  • Happy Days (first performed 1961); Oh les beaux jours (published 1963)
  • Play (performed in German, as Spiel, 1963; English version 1964)
  • Come and Go (first performed in German, then English, 1966)
  • Breath (first performed 1969)
  • Not I (first performed 1972)
  • That Time (first performed 1976)
  • Footfalls (first performed 1976)
  • Neither (1977) (An “opera”, music by Morton Feldman)
  • A Piece of Monologue (first performed 1979)
  • Rockaby (first performed 1981)
  • Ohio Impromptu (first performed 1981)
  • Catastrophe (Catastrophe et autres dramatiques, first performed 1982)
  • What Where (first performed 1983)