Beckett, Samuel Barclay

(1906-1989)

   Irish author, critic, poet and playwright, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature. It is said that Beckett was an unhappy boy who grew into an unhappy young man, one who would not allow anyone to penetrate his solitude. His origins are in Huguenot stock, and he settled down in Paris in 1937, where he suffered a perforated lung when he was stabbed in the street. During World War II, he joined the underground movement and fought for the resistance. Most of his major works, including his poems, were originally written in French. Some of his poems: "Alba," "Ascension," "Cascando," "Dieppe," "Dortmunder," "Echo's Bones," "Roundelay," "Something There," "Waiting for Godot."

   Sources: Beckett Shorts: Selected Poems, Calder Publications (www.calderpublications.com/books/0714543055.html). Collected Poems by Samuel Beckett, 1930-1978. John Calder Pub. 1999. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.