Samuel Beckett - Short Biography / Style
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- Category: English: Authors
- Date Submitted: 03/22/2010 03:16 AM
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Samuel Beckett (1906 – 1989)
He wrote during the 20th century
He was an Irish writer, dramatist (playwright) and poet.
Biography (family and historical background) and most representative works
Samuel Beckett was born near Dublin, Ireland, in 1906. Beckett’s father was a quantity surveyor (he worked within the construction industry) and his mother was a nurse. The Becketts were a Protestant family who lived in a large house with a big garden in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock. 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. At the age of five, Beckett attended a local playschool, where he started to learn music, and then moved to Earlsford House School in the city centre near Harcourt Street. When he was 13 or 14 (1919), Beckett went to Portora Royal School, the school Oscar Wilde attended.
From 1923 to 1927, Beckett studied French, Italian, and English at Trinity College, in Dublin. In 1928, after teaching briefly at Campbell College in Belfast, he moved to Paris and took up a job as an English teaching assistant in higher education establishment. While he was there, he was introduced to Irish author James Joyce. This meeting had a profound effect on Beckett, who quickly became an apostle of the older writer. In 1929, at the age of 23, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay that defends Joyce’s work and method. Beckett’s close relationship with Joyce cooled when he rejected the advances of Joyce’s daughter. It was also during this period that Beckett’s first short story, “Assumption”, was published and that he won a small literary prize for his “Whoroscope”, which dealt with philosopher Descartes meditating on the subject of time and the transiency of life. In 1930, Beckett returned to Trinity College as a lecturer....
He wrote during the 20th century
He was an Irish writer, dramatist (playwright) and poet.
Biography (family and historical background) and most representative works
Samuel Beckett was born near Dublin, Ireland, in 1906. Beckett’s father was a quantity surveyor (he worked within the construction industry) and his mother was a nurse. The Becketts were a Protestant family who lived in a large house with a big garden in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock. 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. At the age of five, Beckett attended a local playschool, where he started to learn music, and then moved to Earlsford House School in the city centre near Harcourt Street. When he was 13 or 14 (1919), Beckett went to Portora Royal School, the school Oscar Wilde attended.
From 1923 to 1927, Beckett studied French, Italian, and English at Trinity College, in Dublin. In 1928, after teaching briefly at Campbell College in Belfast, he moved to Paris and took up a job as an English teaching assistant in higher education establishment. While he was there, he was introduced to Irish author James Joyce. This meeting had a profound effect on Beckett, who quickly became an apostle of the older writer. In 1929, at the age of 23, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay that defends Joyce’s work and method. Beckett’s close relationship with Joyce cooled when he rejected the advances of Joyce’s daughter. It was also during this period that Beckett’s first short story, “Assumption”, was published and that he won a small literary prize for his “Whoroscope”, which dealt with philosopher Descartes meditating on the subject of time and the transiency of life. In 1930, Beckett returned to Trinity College as a lecturer....