Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett (1906–89) was an Irish playwright and novelist. Beckett is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th-century, Beckett wrote in both French and English. He emigrated to Paris in the 1920s and became an assistant to James Joyce. His first novel was Murphy (1938). Beckett's reputation is based largely on three full-length plays - Waiting for Godot (1952), Endgame (1957), and Happy Days (1961) - which explore notions of suffering, paralysis and endurance. His work is often linked to the Theatre of the Absurd with its repetitive, inventive language and obsession with futility and meaninglessness. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in literature.

Beckett had a difficult relationship with his mother, his struggle to establish himself as a writer against her determination that he should enter the family business (quantity surveying). Bouts of heavy drinking, various ailments and illnesses, probably psychosomatic in origin, solitary travels between Germany, France, and Ireland, and ‘two bad years’ ( 1933 –5 ) in London, during which Beckett made several abortive ventures into literary journalism and underwent psychoanalysis.

Sources:

"Beckett, Samuel" World Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Central Washington University. 28 May 2009

Alan Jenkins

"Beckett, Samuel (Barclay)" The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Central Washington University. 28 May 2009