Samuel Beckett

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About Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. He was educated at Portora Royal School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1927. His made his poetry debut in 1930 with Whoroscope and followed it with essays and two novels before World War Two. He wrote one of his most famous plays, Waiting for Godot, in 1949 but it wasn't published in English until 1954. Waiting for Godot brought Beckett international fame and firmly established him as a leading figure in the Theatre of the Absurd. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Beckett continued to write prolifically for radio, TV and the theatre until his death in 1989.

Photo by Roger Pic [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Titles By Samuel Beckett

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Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts (Beckett, Samuel) Apr 12, 2011

by Samuel Beckett

( 934 )

$7.94

From an inauspicious beginning at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone in 1953, followed by bewilderment among American and British audiences, Waiting for Godot has become of the most important and enigmatic plays of the past fifty years and a cornerstone of twentieth-century drama. As Clive Barnes wrote, “Time catches up with genius … Waiting for Godot is one of the masterpieces of the century.”

The story revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone—or something—named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree, inhabiting a drama spun of their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as mankind’s inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett’s language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existential post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time.

Other Formats: Library Binding , Paperback

Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable Jun 16, 2009

by Samuel Beckett, Laura Lindgren

( 276 )

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Few works of contemporary literature are so universally acclaimed as central to our understanding of the human experience as Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy. Molloy, the first of these masterpieces, appeared in French in 1951. It was followed seven months later by Malone Dies and two years later by The Unnamable. All three have been rendered into English by the author.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback , Mass Market Paperback

The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett Dec 20, 2012

by Samuel Beckett

( 225 )

$13.19

The present volume gathers all of Beckett's texts for theatre, from 1955 to 1984. It includes both the major dramatic works and the short and more compressed texts for the stage and for radio.

'He believes in the cadence, the comma, the bite of word on reality, whatever else he believes; and his devotion to them, he makes clear, is a sufficient focus for the reader's attention. In the modern history of literature he is a unique moral figure, not a dreamer of rose-gardens but a cultivator of what will grow in the waste land, who can make us see the exhilarating design that thorns and yucca share with whatever will grow anywhere.' - Hugh Kenner

Contents: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, All That Fall, Acts Without Words, Krapp's Last Tape, Roughs for the Theatre, Embers, Roughs for the Radio, Words and Music, Cascando, Play, Film, The Old Tune, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Breath, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio,...but the clouds..., A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Quad, Catastrophe, Nacht und Traume, What Where.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Murphy Jan 11, 2011

by Samuel Beckett

( 80 )

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Murphy, Samuel Beckett’s first published novel, is set in London and Dublin, during the first decades of the Irish Republic. The title character loves Celia in a striking case of love requited” but must first establish himself in London before his intended bride will make the journey from Ireland to join him. Beckett comically describes the various schemes that Murphy employs to stretch his meager resources and the pastimes that he uses to fill the hours of his days. Eventually Murphy lands a job as a nurse at Magdalen Mental Mercyseat hospital, where he is drawn into the mad world of the patients which ends in a fateful game of chess. While grounded in the comedy and absurdity of much of daily life, Beckett’s work is also an early exploration of themes that recur throughout his entire body of work including sanity and insanity and the very meaning of life.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Watt Jun 16, 2009

by Samuel Beckett

( 82 )

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In prose possessed of the radically stripped-down beauty and ferocious wit that characterize his work, this early novel by Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett recounts the grotesque and improbable adventures of a fantastically logical Irish servant and his master. Watt is a beautifully executed black comedy that, at its core, is rooted in the powerful and terrifying vision that made Beckett one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Hardcover , Paperback

The Complete Short Prose of Samuel Beckett, 1929-1989 (Beckett, Samuel) Dec 1, 2007

by Samuel Beckett, S. E. Gontarski

( 81 )

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Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett was one of the most profoundly original writers of the 20th century. He gave expression to the anguish and isolation of the individual consciousness with a purity and minimalism that have altered the shape of world literature. A tremendously influential poet and dramatist, Beckett spoke of his prose fiction as the "important writing," the medium in which he distilled his ideas most powerfully. Here, for the first time, his short prose is gathered in a definitive, complete volume by leading Beckett scholar S. E. Gontarski.

Other Formats: Paperback

Endgame and Act Without Words Jun 16, 2009

by Samuel Beckett

( 200 )

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Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969; his literary output of plays, novels, stories and poetry has earned him an uncontested place as one of the greatest writers of our time. Endgame, originally written in French and translated into English by Beckett himself, is considered by many critics to be his greatest single work. A pinnacle of Beckett’s characteristic raw minimalism, it is a pure and devastating distillation of the human essence in the face of approaching death.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett: All That Fall, Act Without Words, Krapp's Last Tape, Cascando, Eh Joe, Footfall, Rockaby and others (Beckett, Samuel) Aug 24, 2010

by Samuel Beckett

( 24 )

$9.99

Samuel Beckett, the great minimalist master and winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, has produced some of his most widely praised work for the stage in the form of the shorter play. This complete and definitive collection of twenty-five plays and "playlets" includes Beckett's celebrated Krapp's Last Tape, Embers, Cascando, Play, Eh Joe, Not I, and Footfalls, as well as his mimes, all his radio and television plays, his screenplay for Film, his adaptation of Robert Pignet's The Old Tune, and more recent Catastrophe, What Where, Quad, and Night and Dreams.

Includes:
All That Fall
Act Without Words I
Act Without Words II
Krapp's Last Tape
Rough for Theatre I
Rough for Theatre II
Embers
Rough for Radio I
Rough for Radio II
Words and Music
Cascando
Play
Film
The Old Tune
Come and Go
Eh Joe
Breath
Not I
That Time
Footfalls
Ghost Trio
but the clouds
A Piece of Monologue
Rockaby
Ohio Impromptu
Quad
Catastrophe
Nacht und Träume
What Where

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Molloy (Beckett, Samuel) Dec 1, 2007

by Samuel Beckett

( 86 )

$9.99

Molloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy, appeared in French in 1951, followed seven months later by Malone Dies (Malone meurt) and two years later by The Unnamable (L’Innommable). Few works of contemporary literature have been so universally acclaimed as central to their time and to our understanding of the human experience.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Hardcover , Paperback , Audio CD

Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces Jun 16, 2009

by Samuel Beckett

( 34 )

$9.99

This collection of Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett’s dramatic pieces includes a short stage play, two radio plays, and two pantomimes. The stage play Krapp’s Last Tape evolves a shattering drama out of a monologue of a man who, at age sixty-nine, plays back the autobiographical tape he recorded on his thirty-ninth birthday.
The two radio plays were commissioned by the BBC; All That Fall plumbs the same pessimistic depths [as Waiting for Godot] in what seems a no less despairing search for human dignity” (London Times), and Embers is equally unforgettable theater, born of the ramblings of an old man and his wife. Finally, in the two pantomimes, Beckett takes drama to the point of pure abstraction with his portrayals of, in Act Without Words I, frustrated desired, and in Act Without Words I, corresponding motions of living juxtaposed in the slow despair of one man and the senselessly busy motion of another.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback , Audio, Cassette

Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, and Worstward Ho Nov 11, 2014

by Samuel Beckett, S. E. Gontarski

( 22 )

$9.99

The three pieces that comprise this volume are among the most delicate and disquieting of Samuel Beckett’s later prose. Each confined to a single consciousness in a closed space, these stories are a testament to the mind’s boundless expanse. In Company, a man"one on his back in the dark"hears a voice speak to him, describing significant moments from his lifetime, and yet these memories may be merely fables and figments invented for the sake of companionship. Ill Seen Ill Said tells of a solitary old woman who paces around a cabin, burdened by existence itself. And Worstword Ho explores a world devoid of rationality and purpose, containing the famous directive: "Try again. Fail Again. Fail Better."

The quintessential distillation of Beckett’s philosophy on human existence and the ultimate example of his minimalist approach to fiction, Nohow On is a vital collection, concerned with conception and perception, memory and imagination.

Other Formats: Leather Bound , Paperback

Catastrophe et autres dramaticules: Cette fois, Solo, Berceuse, Impromptu d'Ohio, Quoi où (Du monde entier) (French Edition) Apr 3, 2014

by Samuel Beckett

( 1 )

$9.99

Ce recueil a été publié en 1982 (édition augmentée en 1986).

- Catastrophe : pièce écrite en français en 1982 et dédiée à Vaclav Havel.
- Cette fois : dramaticule écrit en anglais en 1974. Première publication de la traduction française de l’auteur aux Éditions de Minuit en 1978.
- Solo : dramaticule écrit en anglais, traduction française de l’auteur.
- Berceuse : dramaticule écrit en anglais, traduction française de l’auteur.
- Impromptu d’Ohio : dramaticule écrit en anglais, traduction française de l’auteur.
- Quoi où : dramaticule écrit en anglais. Première publication de la traduction française de l’auteur aux Éditions de Minuit en 1983. Ajout au recueil Catastrophe et autres dramaticules en 1986.

Other Formats: Paperback , Mass Market Paperback

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