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<html> <head> <title>Samuel Beckett</title> <meta name="googlebot" content="noodp"> <meta name="robots" content="noodp"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="/silly-nndb-icon.png" /><style type="text/css">  </style></head> <body bgcolor=#ffffff> <center> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr><td valign=top><table width=550 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><table width="100%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" background="/nndb.gif"> <tr> <td rowspan="2" align="left" valign="top"><a href="http://www.nndb.com/"><img src="/title.gif" width="260" height="50" border=0 alt="NNDB"></a></td> <td><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="6"> <tr align="center"> <td width="25%" nowrap>This is a beta version of NNDB</td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right" valign="middle"> <form action="http://search.nndb.com/search/nndb.cgi" method="get"> <input type="hidden" name="nndb" value="1"></input> Search: <select name="omenu"> <option value="unspecified" selected>All Names</option> <option value="living">Living people</option> <option value="dead">Dead people</option> <option value="bands">Band Names</option> <option value="books">Book Titles</option> <option value="movies">Movie Titles</option> <option value="fulltext">Full Text</option> </select> for <input name="query" value="" size=24 maxlength=96> <input type=submit value="Search"> </form></td> </tr> </table>        </td></tr><tr><td bgcolor=red height=2></td></tr><map name=fool><area coords="102,0,240,14" href="/people/172/000025097/bibliography/" alt="bibliography"></map><tr bgcolor=F0F0F0><td bgcolor=F0F0F0 style="padding: 0px 15px 15px 15px;"><img src="/red-profile-2.gif" align="right" height=15 width=240 border=0 usemap=#fool> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=F0F0F0>Samuel Beckett<img src="beckett1.jpg" height=265 width=227 align=right hspace=10 vspace=10 alt="Samuel Beckett">AKA Samuel Barclay BeckettBorn: <a href="/lists/651/000106333/" class=proflink>13-May</a>-<a href="/lists/905/000105590/" class=proflink>1906</a> Birthplace: <a href="/geo/915/000069708/" class=proflink>Dublin, Ireland</a> Died: <a href="/lists/243/000106922/" class=proflink>22-Dec</a>-<a href="/lists/499/000106181/" class=proflink>1989</a> Location of death: <a href="/geo/857/000069650/" class=proflink>Paris, France</a> Cause of death: <a href="/lists/345/000069138/" class=proflink>Respiratory failure</a> Remains: Buried, <a href="/cemetery/627/000208003/" class="proflink">Cimeti鑢e de Montparnasse, Paris, France</a> Gender: Male Religion: <a href="/lists/288/000092012/" class=proflink>Agnostic</a> Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: <a href="/lists/205/000068998/" class=proflink>Playwright</a>, Novelist, <a href="/lists/198/000068991/" class=proflink>Poet</a>Nationality: Ireland Executive summary: Waiting for GodotMilitary service: French Resistance (WWII)Playwright, poet, and novelist Samuel Beckett was introverted and unhappy in childhood and adolescence, pessimistic and fatalistic in his prose. His best known work, originally dismissed by some critics as a strange play in which nothing happens, was Waiting for Godot, wherein two characters wait for a third, who never arrives. He frequently wrote of dark events, stark fear, lack of identity, purposelessness, and death, yet he had an ability to occasionally pierce the bleakness and make such topics suddenly comedic. As a young man he studied at Trinity College Dublin, and worked as secretary to <a href="/people/073/000031977/">James Joyce</a>, who became his mentor. His adopted home was France, where he settled in 1937, and he said that he preferred "France in war to Ireland in peace." He worked with the French Underground during the World War II occupation by Germany, first as a courier in Paris and later with the Maquis sabotage of the German army in the Vaucluse mountains. For his service he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and French M閐aille de la R閟istance. Though English was his native language, all of his major works were originally written in French. He said he was appalled to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, fearing it would make him a celebrity everywhere he went, and he sent a friend to Stockholm to accept the honor on his behalf. He spent more than fifty years with his lover, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, and died just months after her death in 1989. <blockquote><tt>VLADIMIR: We have to come back tomorrow. ESTRAGO: What for? VLADIMIR: To wait for Godot. ESTRAGON: Ah! (Long pause.) He didn't come? VLADIMIR: No.</tt></blockquote>Father: William Beckett Jr. (surveyor) Mother: May Roe Beckett (m. 31-Aug-1901, d. 1950) Brother: Frank Beckett (d. 1954) Girlfriend: <a href="/people/228/000174703/">Peggy Guggenheim</a> (art collector, together 1937) Wife: Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil (b. 1900, together after 1938, m. 1961, d. 1989, no children)     High School: Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, Ireland     University: <a href="/edu/608/000082362/">BA, Trinity College Dublin (1927)</a>     Lecturer: <a href="/edu/980/000101677/">English, École Normale Supérieure, Paris (1928-30)</a>     Lecturer: <a href="/edu/608/000082362/">French, Trinity College Dublin (1930-32)</a>     University: <a href="/edu/608/000082362/">MA, Trinity College Dublin (1931)</a>     <a href="/honors/715/000063526/">Croix de Guerre</a> 1946     French M閐aille de la R閟istance 1946     <a href="/honors/976/000067775/">Nobel Prize for Literature</a> 1969     <a href="/lists/936/000043807/">Irish Ancestry</a>     <a href="/event/843/000123474/">Mugged</a> 1937     <a href="/event/092/000348045/">Stabbed</a> Paris (Jan-1938)     <a href="/event/297/000113955/">Surgery</a> Tumor removed from jaw, 1965     <a href="/event/297/000113955/">Surgery</a> Cataract removal, 1970, 1971     Risk Factors: <a href="/lists/795/000180255/">Cancer</a>, <a href="/lists/829/000092553/">Emphysema</a>, <a href="/lists/712/000075487/">Insomnia</a> Author of books: Proust (<tt>1931</tt>, essays) Dream of Fair to Middling Women (<tt>1932</tt>, novel; first published in 1993) More Pricks Than Kicks (<tt>1933</tt>, novel) Echo's Bones (<tt>1935</tt>, poetry) Murphy (<tt>1938</tt>, novel) Mercier and Camier (<tt>1946</tt>, novel; first published in 1970) Three Dialogues (<tt>1949</tt>, letters to and from Georges Duthuit) Malone Dies (<tt>1951</tt>, novel) Molloy (<tt>1951</tt>, novel) The Unnamable (<tt>1953</tt>, novel) Watt (<tt>1953</tt>, novel) How It Is (<tt>1961</tt>, novel) Imagination Dead, Imagine (<tt>1965</tt>, novel) Stories and Texts for Nothing (<tt>1967</tt>, short stories) First Love (<tt>1970</tt>, novel) The Lost Ones (<tt>1972</tt>, novel) Mirlitonades (<tt>1978</tt>, poetry) The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 (<tt>1995</tt>, short stories) Wrote plays: Eleutheria (<tt>1947</tt>, first published in 1995) En Attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) (<tt>1953</tt>) Act Without Words (<tt>1956</tt>) Act Without Words II (<tt>1956</tt>) All That Fall (<tt>1956</tt>) Endgame (<tt>1957</tt>) Krapp's Last Tape (<tt>1958</tt>) Rough for Theatre (<tt>1958</tt>) Embers (<tt>1959</tt>) Happy Days (<tt>1960</tt>) Words and Music (<tt>1961</tt>) The Old Tune (<tt>1963</tt>) Play (<tt>1963</tt>) Come and Go (<tt>1965</tt>) Breath (<tt>1969</tt>) Not I (<tt>1972</tt>) Footfalls (<tt>1975</tt>) That Time (<tt>1975</tt>) A Piece of Monologue (<tt>1980</tt>) Rockaby (<tt>1981</tt>) Catastrophe (<tt>1982</tt>) Ohio Impromptu (<tt>1982</tt>) What Where (<tt>1983</tt>) Quad (<tt>1982</tt>) <table> <tr> <td align=right valign=middle style="padding-right: 5px;">New! <a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/" class="fotmlink" style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; color: #dd0000;">NNDB MAPPER</a></td> <td valign=middle align=right style="border-left: 1px solid #bbb; padding-left: 5px;">Create a map starting with</td> <td valign=middle align=right><a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=25097"><img src="/man.gif" border=0 style="padding: 2px;"></a></td> <td align=left valign=middle> <a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=25097">Samuel Beckett</a></td> </tr> </table> Requires Flash 7+ and Javascript. 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