Bitef

Biographical Table 1906 Samuel Barclay Beckett born at Foxrock near Dublin on 13 April (Good Friday), second son of William Frank Beckett, a quantity surveyor, and his wife Mary, née Roe. Middle-class Protestant family, comfortably off. Kindergarten: Miss Ida Eisner’s Academy, Stillorgan. Prep school: Earlsfort School, Dublin. Public school: Portora Royal, Enniskillen; excellent academic and sporting record. 1923-7 Trinity College, Dublin, first as pensioner, then as foundation scholar. In B.A. examinations placed first in first class in Modern Literature (French and Italian); awarded large gold medal and Moderatorship prize. Active in Modern Languages Society, Cricket Club, Golf Club; keen chess player. Summer 1926: first contact with France (bicycle tour of the châteaux of the Loire.). 1928 Spends first two terms teaching at Campbell College, Belfast. 1928-30 Exhange »Lecteur« at École Normale Supérieure in Paris; meets James Joyce. Summer 1930: Beckett’s first separately published work, the poem »Whoroscope«, issued by Nancy Cunard’s Hours Press in Paris. 1930-2 Assistant Lecturer in French, Trinity College,

Dublin. Resigns after four terms. 19-21 February 1931: performance of Beckett’s first dramatic work, »Le Kid,«, a parody sketch after Corneille written in collaboration with Georges Pelorso, French »Lecteur« at Trinity. 1931 »Proust«, his first and last major piece of literary criticism, published by Chatto & Windus. 1932-7 »Wanderjahre« culminating in the decision to settle permanently in Paris. 1933 Death of his father, who leaves him an annuity which forms the bulk of his slender income until the royalties from »Godot« twenty years later. 1934 Chatto & Windus publish »More Pricks than Kicks« (short stories). 1935 »Echo’s Bones and Other Precipitates« (first collection of verse) published in Paris. 1938 »Murphy«, his first novel, published by Routledge. An Oxford undergraduate, Iris Murdoch, deeply influenced by the book. 1942 Resistance group in which Beckett is active is betrayed to the Gestapo; he escapes to the unoccupied southern zone with only minutes to spare. 1942-5 Ekes out a living as an agricultural labourer not far from Avignon (’we were there together, I could swear to it! Picking grapes... ’, »Waiting for Godot,« p. 62). Writes