Samuel Beckett

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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.

Milestones

13 April 1906

SB , playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, was born at Foxrock near Dublin, the younger of two sons.
Cohn, Ruby. Back to Beckett. Princeton University Press.
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27 May 1929

A critical essay on James Joyce , included in Our Exagmination Round his Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, was SB 's first adult published work.
Federman, Raymond, and John Fletcher. Samuel Beckett. University of California Press.
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17 October 1952

SB 's play En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) was first published in French in Paris; this landmark modernist work quickly became an enormous popular success around the world.
Federman, Raymond, and John Fletcher. Samuel Beckett. University of California Press.
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Parker, Peter, editor. The Reader’s Companion to Twentieth-Century Writers. Fourth Estate and Helicon.
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Taylor, John Russell. The Penguin Dictionary of theTheatre. Penguin.
332

9 August 1955

The first production of SB 's Waiting for Godot in English, directed by Peter Hall , opened at the Arts Theatre in London.
Palmer, Alan, and Veronica Palmer. The Chronology of British History. Century.
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Hartnoll, Phyllis, editor. The Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Oxford University Press.
366

22 December 1989

SB , Irish playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, died of respiratory failure caused by emphysema at the Hôpital St Anne in Paris, almost six months after the death of his wife .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

13 April 1906

SB , playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, was born at Foxrock near Dublin, the younger of two sons.
Cohn, Ruby. Back to Beckett. Princeton University Press.
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