Samuel Beckett

From the late 1950s he became romantically involved with Barbara Bray, a widow with whom he also worked professionally. Their relationship lasted until his death.

In 1961, he married tennis player, Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil in a secret civil ceremony that was held in England.

He died on December 22, 1989 at the age of 83 in Paris, France. He was interred along with his wife at the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Samuel Beckett was born on April 13, 1906 in Foxrock, Dublin, Ireland, to William Frank Beckett, a quantity surveyor and May Barclay Roe, a nurse. At the age of five, he began to learn music.

He attended the Earlsfort House School in Harcourt Street. From 1919, he attended the Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh – it was the same school that Oscar Wilde attended.

He was a good cricket player and played two first-class games against Northamptonshire. He is, by far, the only Nobel laureate to be part of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, a cricket reference book.

From 1923 to 1927, he attended the Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied English, French and Italian. After he received a B.A. degree, he became a lecturer in the École Normale Supérieure (Paris), a higher education establishment.

In 1929, his first critical essay titled, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’ was published. This piece of writing defended author James Joyce’s works and his methodology.

In 1930, he joined Trinity College as a lecturer and the same year he submitted a French paper on poet Jean du Chas to the Modern Languages Society of Trinity. Jean du Chas was the founder of the le Concentrisme movement.

In 1931, he came out with the essay titled, ‘Proust’, which he had finished authoring by the summer of that year. The following year, he completed his unpublished first novel, ‘Dream of Fair to Middling Women’. The book was rejected by many publishers and was published in later years.

In 1934, after his academic career came to an end at the Trinity College, he authored the poem titled, ‘Gnome’, later published in the ‘Dublin Magazine’. That year his collection of short prose, ‘More Pricks Than Kicks’ was published.

In 1938, he published his novel titled, ‘Murphy’. This work of prose fiction received many rejections and was finally published after the recommendation of his friend, Jack Butler Yeats.

His play, ‘Waiting for Godot’ was voted as ‘the most significant English language play of the 20th century’. This play is regarded as a timeless classic and it was one of his most famous works.