Samuel Beckett Biography and latest books by Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde writer, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human culture, often coupled with black comedy.

Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. In fact he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist towards the end of his career.

Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.

Early life and education
The Becketts were members of the Church of Ireland. The family home, Cooldrinagh in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock, was a large house and garden complete with tennis court built in 1903 by Samuel\'s father William. The house and garden, together with the surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby Leopardstown Racecourse, the Foxrock railway station and Harcourt Street station at the city terminus of the line, all feature in his prose and plays. Beckett\'s father was a quantity surveyor and his mother a nurse.

Samuel Beckett was born on Good Friday, 13 April 1906 to William Frank Beckett, a Civil Engineer, and May Barclay; they had married in 1901. Beckett had one older brother, Frank Edward Beckett (born 1902). At the age of five, Beckett attended a local playschool, where he learnt music, and then moved to Earlsfort House School in the city centre. In 1919, Beckett went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. A natural athlete, Beckett excelled at cricket as a left-handed batsman and a left-arm medium-pace bowler. Later, he was to play for Dublin University. As a result, he became the only Nobel laureate to have an entry in Wisden Cricketers\' Almanack, the "bible" of cricket.

Early writings
Beckett studied French, Italian, and English at Trinity College, Dublin from 1923 to 1927. Beckett graduated with a BA, and—after teaching briefly at Campbell College in Belfast—took up the post of lecteur d\'anglais. While there, he was introduced to renowned Irish author James Joyce. This meeting had a profound effect on the young man. Beckett assisted Joyce in various ways, one of which was research towards the book that became Finnegans Wake.

In 1929, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay entitled Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce. The essay defends Joyce\'s work and method, chiefly from allegations of wanton obscurity and dimness. Beckett\'s close relationship with Joyce and his family cooled, however, when he rejected the advances of Joyce\'s daughter Lucia owing to her progressing schizophrenia. Beckett\'s first short story, Assumption, was published in Jolas\'s periodical transition. The next year he won a small literary prize with his hastily composed poem Whoroscope.

In 1930, Beckett returned to Trinity College as a lecturer only to resign from Trinity at the end of 1931 and terminate his brief academic career.

Beckett travelled in Europe. He spent some time in London, where in 1931 he published Proust, his critical study of French author Marcel Proust. Two years later, following his father\'s death, he began two years\' treatment with a psychoanalyst, who took him to hear Carl Jung\'s third Tavistock lecture, an event which Beckett still recalled many years later. The lecture focused on the subject of the "never properly born"; aspects of it became evident in Beckett\'s works, such as Watt and Waiting for Godot. In 1932, he wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, but after many rejections from publishers decided to abandon it (it was eventually published in 1993). Despite his inability to get it published, however, the novel served as a source for many of Beckett\'s early poems, as well as for his first full-length book, the 1933 short-story collection More Pricks Than Kicks.

Later life and death
The 1960s was a period of change for Beckett, both on a personal level and as a writer. In 1961, he married Suzanne in a secret civil ceremony in England (its secrecy due to reasons relating to French inheritance law). The success of his plays led to invitations to attend rehearsals and productions around the world, leading eventually to a new career as a theatre director. In 1956, he had his first commission from the BBC Third Programme for a radio play, All That Fall. He continued writing sporadically for radio and extended his scope to include cinema and television. He began to write in English again, although he also wrote in French until the end of his life.

From the late 1950s until his death, Beckett had a relationship with Barbara Bray, a widow who worked as a script editor for the BBC. In October 1969 while on holiday in Tunis with Suzanne, Beckett heard that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Anticipating that her intensely private husband would be saddled with fame from that moment on, Suzanne called the award a "catastrophe"

Works
Beckett\'s career as a writer can be roughly divided into three periods: his early works, up until the end of World War II in 1945; his middle period, stretching from 1945 until the early 1960s, during which period he wrote what are probably his best-known works; and his late period, from the early 1960s until Beckett\'s death in 1989, during which his works tended to become shorter and his style more minimalist.