Samuel Beckett Biography

Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. He befriended the famous Irish novelist James Joyce, and his first published work was an essay on Joyce. Between 1951 and 1953, Beckett wrote his most famous novels, the trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable.

Waiting for Godot, Beckett's first play, was written originally in French in 1948 (Beckett himself subsequently translated the play into English). It premiered at a tiny theater in Paris in 1953. This play began Beckett's association with the Theatre of the Absurd, which influenced later playwrights like Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard.

The most famous of Beckett's subsequent plays include Endgame (1958) and Krapp's Last Tape (1959). He also wrote several even more experimental plays, like Breath (1969), a thirty-second play. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969 and died in 1989 in Paris.

Samuel Beckett Study Guides

Endgame

Published

Happy Days

Published

Samuel Beckett Quotes

If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.

It means what it says.

Samuel Beckett Fiction

Human Wishes

Published 1936

Eleutheria

Published 1947

En attendant Godot

Published 1952

Acte sans Paroles I

Published 1956

Acte sans Paroles II

Published 1956

Fin de partie

Published 1957

Krapp's Last Tape

Published 1958

Fragment de théâtre I

Published 1950

Fragment de théâtre II

Published 1950

Happy Days

Published 1961

Play

Published 1963

Come and Go

Published 1966

Breath

Published 1969

Not I

Published 1972

That Time

Published 1976

Footfalls

Published 1976

Neither

Published 1977

A Piece of Monologue

Published 1979

Rockaby

Published 1981

Ohio Impromptu

Published 1981

Catastrophe

Published 1982

What Where

Published 1983

Samuel Beckett Novels

Molloy

Published 1951

Malone meurt

Published 1951

L'innommable

Published 1953

Comment c'est

Published 1961

Mercier and Camier

Published 1946