Samuel Beckett

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Standard Name: Beckett, Samuel
SB , Irish expatriate poet, short-story writer, novelist, and playwright, was a major force in international twentieth-century writing and especially theatre. He wrote a high proportion of his works in French, usually doing the translations into English himself. His increasingly death-obsessed absurdity and minimalism are combined with an invincible energy of language, even while the text appears to despair of the efficacy of words.

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Ann Quin
AQ published a handful of short stories and articles in various journals, including Nova, the London Magazine, transatlantic review, and Antigonish Review.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
231
qtd. in
Sewell, Brocard, and Colin Wilson. Like Black Swans: Some People and Themes. Limited Edition, Tabb House, 1982.
186
In the mid-sixties she told her publisher,...
death Harriet Shaw Weaver
Samuel Beckett , hearing of the news in Paris, remarked to Sylvia Beach : I . . . shall think of her when I think of goodness.
qtd. in
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking, 1970.
455
Having dedicated her life to English...
Friends, Associates Cecily Mackworth
Her literary circle in Paris was highly eclectic: the many camps in which she had friends included the Surrealist rump, the incoming Existentialists, and the Communists (who were mostly ex-Surrealists).
Mackworth, Cecily. Ends of the World. Carcanet, 1987.
60-1
Tristan Tzara became a...
Friends, Associates Nancy Cunard
NC established important relationships in Paris: with Dadaist Tristan Tzara , Louis Aragon , American writers Janet Flanner and Solita Solano , and photographer Man Ray .
Clements, Patricia. “’Transmuting’ Nancy Cunard”. Dalhousie Review, Vol.
66
, 1986, pp. 188-14.
189
During the second world war she became...
Health Nancy Cunard
At this time medical expenses in connection with a bad arm had cost her 20,000 francs.
Mackworth, Cecily. Ends of the World. Carcanet, 1987.
121
Samuel Beckett reported in 1956 that she was looking very wraithy.
Tayler, Christopher. “Under–the–Table–Talk”. London Review of Books, Vol.
37
, No. 6, 19 Mar. 2015, pp. 19-23.
19
Intertextuality and Influence Shelagh Delaney
SD wrote her first and most successful play, A Taste of Honey, at the age of nineteen. Published interviews give conflicting reports of her motivation for writing it. One interview quotes her as saying...
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Devlin
After writing for television, AD was drawn to live theatre because of the medium's relative freedom from censorship and its enduring qualities: It is Literature. When you create a character in the theatre you are...
Intertextuality and Influence Margaret Drabble
The protagonist of this book, ageing Francesca Stubbs, is employed as an inspector of retirement homes. She and the other characters here, witnessing the ends' of friends' lives and approaching their own, make sense of...
Intertextuality and Influence Christine Brooke-Rose
CBR looked to Pound for technique and Beckett for morale, appreciating in each his obstinate humour in the face of despair.
qtd. in
Hayman, David, and Keith Cohen. “An Interview with Christine Brooke-Rose”. Contemporary Literature, Vol.
17
, No. 1, 1976, pp. 1-23.
14
She was also influenced by the French nouveau roman, especially the work of...
Intertextuality and Influence Zoë Fairbairns
This time only, ZF uses a male voice for a coming-of-age story, which holds up its narrator-protagonist to mockery and a kind of despairing sympathy, as it begins with some slight adolescent petulance and becomes...
Intertextuality and Influence Iris Murdoch
Her omnivorous reading during the last year of her degree included the major modern novelists, notably including Proust and Woolf (the darling dangerous woman who made her feel quite incapable of writing anything straight...
Intertextuality and Influence Christine Brooke-Rose
Influenced by Samuel Beckett 's Malone Dies, this novel perpetually delays action: We'll go on as if. As if for instance I were someone else, Cassandra perhaps.
Brooke-Rose, Christine. Amalgamemnon. Carcanet, 1984.
7
qtd. in
Birch, Sarah. Christine Brooke-Rose and Contemporary Fiction. Clarendon Press, 1994.
118
Mira Enketei (from the Greek...
Intertextuality and Influence Christine Brooke-Rose
This sets out to explore the effects of various technological media on the novel genre. It begins with the apparent forcible entry into a story by Jane Austen of a great German contemporary of Austen:...
Intertextuality and Influence Edna O'Brien
EOB uses books as presiding spirits of her own writing. James Joyce 's image is at one end of the mantelpiece and Samuel Beckett 's at the other. . . . I write by hand...
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Carson
AC 's contributions include rendering Fragment 286 by the Greek poet Ibykos in the manner successively of various more modern voices: John Donne , Samuel Beckett , Franz Kafka , an FBI report on Bertolt Brecht

Timeline

1949: John Calder (Publishers) Limited was founded...

Writing climate item

1949

John Calder (Publishers) Limited was founded by John Calder in London.
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 112. Gale Research, 1991.
48-9
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

1955: Copies of Molloy by Samuel Beckett and Lolita...

Writing climate item

1955

Copies of Molloy by Samuel Beckett and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (both published in France) were seized by British Customs.
Craig, Alec. The Banned Books of England and Other Countries. George Allen and Unwin, 1962.
112
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin, 1984.
391-2

By early November 1973: Experimental novelist B. S. Johnson prefaced...

Writing climate item

By early November 1973

Experimental novelist B. S. Johnson prefaced his short-story volume Aren't You Rather Young To Be Writing Your Memoirs? with a polemical critique listing only sixteen serious contemporary British writers.
Gordon, Giles. “Reading Ann Quin’s Berg”. Context: A Forum for Literary Arts and Culture, 2001.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
3740 (9 November 1973): 1361

Texts

Beckett, Samuel. Come and go: dramaticule. Calder and Boyars, 1967.
Beckett, Samuel. Comment dire. Editions de Minuit, 1989.
Beckett, Samuel. Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Black Cat, 1992.
Beckett, Samuel. En attendant Godot. Editions de Minuit, 1952.
Beckett, Samuel. Fin de Partie. Editions de Minuit, 1957.
Beckett, Samuel. Happy Days. Grove Press, 1961.
Beckett, Samuel. Krapp’s Last Tape. Faber and Faber, 1958.
Beckett, Samuel. Molloy. Editions de Minuit, 1951.
Beckett, Samuel. More Pricks Than Kicks. Chatto and Windus, 1934.
Beckett, Samuel. Murphy. Routledge, 1938.
Beckett, Samuel. No’s knife. Collected shorter prose, 1945-1966. Calder and Boyars, 1967.
Beckett, Samuel. Not I. Faber and Faber, 1971.
Beckett, Samuel. Stirrings Still. Blue Moon, 1988.
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Faber and Faber, 1955.
Beckett, Samuel. Watt. Olympia Press, 1958.
Beckett, Samuel. Whoroscope. Hours Press, 1930.