Samuel Beckett
1906–1989 · Irish playwright and novelist who wrote in French and English, author of Waiting for Godot, and Nobel laureate.
Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in 1906 in Foxrock, a suburb of Dublin; his father was a quantity surveyor. He went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, which Oscar Wilde had also attended, and then to Trinity College Dublin, where he studied French and Italian. A natural athlete, he played two first-class cricket matches for Dublin University, which makes him the only Nobel laureate in literature listed in Wisden, the cricketers' almanac. In 1928 he went to teach in Paris, where he met James Joyce and became his friend and helper. During the Second World War he served as a courier for a French Resistance network, fled with his companion Suzanne to the village of Roussillon when the group was betrayed, and received the Croix de Guerre. After the war he wrote mainly in French, translating his own works into English himself. Waiting for Godot (1953) made him famous, followed by Endgame and other plays. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 and died in Paris in 1989.
Samuel Beckett is also an author in the library: author page and works.
Faith: Raised an Anglican in the Church of Ireland; he later became agnostic. Source: Wikipedia
See also: James Joyce · Oscar Wilde · Albert Camus
Key dates
- 1906 Born in Foxrock, near Dublin
- 1923 Enters Trinity College Dublin
- 1928 Begins teaching in Paris; meets James Joyce
- 1942 Flees to Roussillon after his Resistance network is betrayed
- 1945 Awarded the Croix de Guerre
- 1953 Waiting for Godot first staged in Paris
- 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature
- 1989 Dies in Paris
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