Samuel Beckett
| Samuel Beckett | |
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Beckett in 1977
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| Born | Samuel Barclay Beckett 13 April 1906 Foxrock, Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | 22 December 1989 (aged 83) Paris, France |
| Pen name | Andrew Belis |
| Occupation | Novelist, playwright, poet, theatre director, essayist |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Alma mater | Trinity College Dublin |
| Genre | Drama, fiction, poetry, screenplays, personal correspondence |
| Literary movement | Modernism |
| Notable works |
Murphy (1938) Molloy (1951) Malone Dies (1951) The Unnamable (1953) Waiting for Godot (1953) Watt (1953) Endgame (1957) Krapp's Last Tape (1958) How It Is (1961) |
| Notable awards |
Nobel Prize in Literature 1969 Croix de Guerre 1945 |
| Years active | 1929-1989 |
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Samuel Barclay Beckett (/ˈbɛkɪt/; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century.
Beckett's work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd".
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.
The Becketts were members of the Anglican 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.
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