Until you’ve consumed all of the best Samuel Beckett books, can you even claim to be a true fan?
- The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett (Faber Drama) (2006)
- Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (2009)
- The Complete Short Prose of Samuel Beckett, 1929-1989 (1997)
- Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts (2011)
- Murphy (2011)
- Watt (2009)
- The Collected Shorter Plays Beckett (2010)
- The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot (Beckett, Samuel) (2019)
- Samuel Beckett’s Library (2017)
- I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader (1994)
The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett (Faber Drama) (2006)
The present volume gathers all of Beckett’s texts for theatre, from 1955 to 1984. It includes both the major dramatic works and the short and more compressed texts for the stage and for radio.’He believes in the cadence, the comma, the bite of word on reality, whatever else he believes; and his devotion to them, he makes clear, is a sufficient focus for the reader’s attention.
Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (2009)
Few works of contemporary literature are so universally acclaimed as central to our understanding of the human experience as Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy. Molloy, the first of these masterpieces, appeared in French in 1951. It was followed seven months later by Malone Dies and two years later by The Unnamable. All three have been rendered into English by the author.
The Complete Short Prose of Samuel Beckett, 1929-1989 (1997)
Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett was one of the most profoundly original writers of the 20th century. He gave expression to the anguish and isolation of the individual consciousness with a purity and minimalism that have altered the shape of world literature. A tremendously influential poet and dramatist, Beckett spoke of his prose fiction as the “important writing,” the medium in which he distilled his ideas most powerfully.
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts (2011)
From an inauspicious beginning at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone in 1953, followed by bewilderment among American and British audiences, Waiting for Godot has become of the most important and enigmatic plays of the past fifty years and a cornerstone of twentieth-century drama.
Murphy (2011)
Murphy, Samuel Beckett’s first published novel, is set in London and Dublin, during the first decades of the Irish Republic. The title character loves Celia in a “striking case of love requited” but must first establish himself in London before his intended bride will make the journey from Ireland to join him. Beckett comically describes the various schemes that Murphy employs to stretch his meager resources and the pastimes that he uses to fill the hours of his days.
Watt (2009)
In prose possessed of the radically stripped-down beauty and ferocious wit that characterize his work, this early novel by Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett recounts the grotesque and improbable adventures of a fantastically logical Irish servant and his master. Watt is a beautifully executed black comedy that, at its core, is rooted in the powerful and terrifying vision that made Beckett one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.
The Collected Shorter Plays Beckett (2010)
Samuel Beckett, the great minimalist master and winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, produced some of his most widely praised work for the stage in the form of the short play.
The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot (Beckett, Samuel) (2019)
From the mid-1960s, Samuel Beckett himself directed all his major plays in Berlin, Paris, and London. For most of these productions he meticulously prepared notebooks for his personal use. The theatrical notebooks of Beckett that are reproduced in facsimile here are translated and annotated and thus offer a remarkable record of his own involvement with the staging of his texts.
Samuel Beckett’s Library (2017)
Samuel Beckett’s Library critically examines the reading notes and marginalia contained in the books of Samuel Beckett’s surviving library in Paris. Previously inaccessible to scholars, this is the first study to assess the importance of the marginalia, inscriptions, and other manuscript notes in the 750 volumes of the library.
I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader (1994)
Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature and acknowledged as one of the greatest writers of our time, Samuel Beckett has had a profound impact upon the literary landscape of the twentieth century. In this one-volume collection of his fiction, drama, poetry, and critical writings, we get an unsurpassed look at his work.
Best Samuel Beckett Books That Will Hook You
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some samuel beckett books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Samuel Beckett and Catastrophe
Author(s): Michiko Tsushima, Yoshiki Tajiri, Mariko Hori Tanaka
ID: 3541974, Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2022, Size: 3 Mb, Format: pdf
Literary Techniques’ Power in Treating Life’s Absurdity, Regarding Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy
Author(s): Mahdi Shuhaib
ID: 2933878, Publisher: Tabriz University Press, Year: 2021, Size: 901 Kb, Format: pdf
Raymond Federman and Samuel Beckett: Voices in the Closet
Author(s): Nathalie Camerlynck
ID: 3155201, Publisher: Anthem Press, Year: 2021, Size: 9 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not final. Some books are really chart-busters according to The New York Times, others are written by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant resources you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.