The letters of Samuel Beckett.
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

"The Letters of Samuel Beckett offers for the first time a comprehensive range of letters of one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century. This volume includes letters written between 1929 and 1940. It provides a vivid and personal view of Western Europe in the 1930s, marked by the gradual emergence, against his own hesitations and the indifference or hostility of others, of Beckett's unique voice and sensibility. Even in the tentativeness of the early writing, the letters show his care for his work as well as what he must share or relinquish to allow it to have a life beyond, even despite, himself. Detailed introductions, translations, explanatory notes, profiles of major correspondents, chronologies, and other contextual information accompany the letters. For anyone interested in twentieth-century literature and theatre this edition offers not only a record of achievements but a powerful literary experience in itself."

This fourth and final volume, which completes the Cambridge edition of 'The Letters of Samuel Beckett', covers the final twenty-four years of what was, as Beckett saw it, a surprisingly long life. During these years he produced many of his finest and most concentrated works for theatre, plays that included Not I, Ohio Impromptu, and Catastrophe; for television he wrote Eh Joe and Ghost Trio; while in prose, he produced the late 'trilogy' that comprises Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, and Worstward Ho. In 1969, Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the letters from this period show him struggling to cope with the pressures created by his ever-growing international fame. The letters reveal how, later, he turned his mind to his legacy, as seen through his interactions with biographers and archivists. This volume also provides chronologies, explanatory notes, translations, and profiles of Beckett's chief correspondents.