Samuel Barclay Beckett was born on Good Friday, April 13, 1906, in Foxrock, Ireland, near Dublin. He studied modern languages at Trinity College in Dublin and graduated in 1927. The following year, Beckett went to Paris, where he quickly became acquainted with a group of avant-garde artists, including James Joyce. There, Beckett taught English at the École Normale Superieure in Paris for two years before returning to Trinity College to teach French in 1930. He left Trinity College after one year to travel through Europe. Beckett settled in Paris, France in 1937, and lived there for most of the rest of his life.

During World War II, Beckett joined an underground resistance group. He was forced to flee from Paris to unoccupied France in 1942 because of the threat of arrest by the German Gestapo. Hiding in the village of Roussillon in Southern France, Beckett worked as an agricultural laborer until the war ended in 1945, at which time he returned to Paris and began his most productive creative period.

As a poet, Beckett made his debut in 1930 with “Whoroscope,” followed by a collection of essays, Proust (1931), and one of his short stories, "More Pricks than Kicks" (1934). His career as a novelist began in 1938 with the publication of Murphy. After the war, Beckett wrote the trilogy of novels Molloy (1951), Malone Meurt (1951, “Malone Dies”), and L’Innommable (1953, “The Unnamable”). He also wrote plays during this period, including Eleutheria and Waiting for Godot. Upon its first performances in France and then America, Waiting for Godot brought Beckett international fame. Beckett translated Waiting for Godot into English himself - something he would do for almost all his work - and it was published by Grove Press in 1953. In the succeeding years Beckett avoided the limelight and dedicated his life to his work, which was continuously published by Grove Press in America during his lifetime. He made his only trip to the United States in 1964 to be present at the shooting of the film he had written entitled Film. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.

Beckett died in Paris on December 22, 1989.

Sources

"Beckett, Samuel." Encyclopedia Britannica Online, February 3, 2016. Encyclopædia Britannica (Accessed April 3, 2020).

Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

"Samuel (Barclay) Beckett." In Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2005. (Accessed April 3, 2020). Gale Document Number: GALE|H1000006745.

Calvin Israel was an associate professor of English at the State University of New York at Geneseo. He began his relationship with Beckett by writing a magazine article to publically correct an encyclopedia error concerning Beckett’s work. Beckett read the article and initiated a correspondence with Israel. After a 1976 meeting with Israel in Paris, Beckett sent him manuscripts and other materials. Israel also began a personal collection of Beckett’s work and sent many of his purchases to Beckett to be signed. Israel died in 1984, after which his collection of Beckett materials passed to his wife Joann.

Robert Pinget was born in 1919 in Geneva, Switzerland. As a young man, he studied and practiced law. He became dissatisfied with his legal career, however, and moved to Paris and enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts to study painting in 1946. Gradually he discovered his interest in writing and became ensconced in the Nouveau Roman (or “New Novel”) literary movement led by authors such as Alain Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras. He published his first book, the collection of short stories Entre Fantoine et Agapa, in 1950. Although his unconventional style made publishers leery, Pinget’s works were aided by endorsements from renowned French writers Alain Robbe-Grillet and Albert Camus. Pinget met Samuel Beckett in 1953, and they forged a friendship that became important to Pinget both personally and professionally. Beckett translated Pinget’s La Manivelle into English and Pinget, in turn, translated Beckett’s All That Fall into French. L’Inquisitoire, published in 1962 and translated into English as The Inquisitory in 1966, is perhaps Pinget’s best known work. Robert Pinget died in 1997 in Tours, France.

Sources

"Pinget, Robert." Encyclopedia Britannica Online, August 21, 2019. Encyclopædia Britannica (Accessed April 3, 2020).

Henkels, Jr., Robert M. Robert Pinget: The Novel as Quest. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979.

"Robert Pinget." In Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2003. (Accessed April 3, 2020). Gale Document Number: GALE|H1000078446.

Barnet (“Barney”) Lee Rosset was born in Chicago in 1922. He attended Swarthmore College, University of California, Los Angeles, and the New School. Although he had no background in publishing, he acquired the nearly-defunct Grove Press in 1951. During his tenure at Grove, the publishing house was pivotal in the introduction and publication of avant-garde writers. Rosset was the first to publish Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the United States in 1954, and later published the works of Absurdist playwrights Eugène Ionesco and Jean Genet. Rosset and Beckett maintained their close friendship after the sale of Grove in 1985 until Beckett’s death in 1989. Rosset has remained committed to protecting Beckett’s legacy. Under Rosset, Grove also published The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.

Sources

"Barney Rosset, Courting Literary Controversy." National Public Radio (April 18, 2009). http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102070224

"Rosset, Barney." In Encyclopedia Britannica Online, June 13, 2011. Encyclopædia Britannica (Accessed April 3, 2020).

McGrath, Charles. "Barney Rosset: The publisher who fought Puritanism, and won." The New York Times, September 24, 2008.

Judith Schmidt Douw was born Judith Schmidt in 1926. She began working at Grove Press in 1955. Although she was officially Barney Rosset's secretary, the small staff at Grove Press dictated duties beyond her official job title. It was during her time at Grove Press that Douw and Samuel Beckett began a correspondence that grew from a professional correspondence to a personal one. They met for the first time when Douw traveled to Paris in 1959. While at Grove Press she also became friends with Alan Schneider, Beckett's friend and American director of his only foray into cinema, Film (1964). In 1965 Schmidt traveled to Europe to represent Grove Press, Beckett, and Schneider at film festivals screening Film. Judith Schmidt married John de Peyster Douw in 1970. That same year she left Grove Press to work on the presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy.

Alan Schneider was born in a suburb of Kharkov, Ukraine in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution. On July 4, 1923, the Schneiders emigrated to America. His parents, Leo Victor Schneider and Rebecka Malkin Schneider, were both physicians specializing in tuberculosis. Schneider attended Johns Hopkins University with the intention to study theoretical physics, but transferred to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, to study political science and literature. Once in Madison, he actively pursued the theatre. In 1940 he attended Cornell University, where he received an MA in Literature and the Dramatic Arts. In 1956 Schneider began a lifelong artistic partnership with Beckett when he agreed to direct the American premier of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. In 1964 he directed Beckett’s Film, for which Beckett visited New York. Throughout his career as a director, Schneider was committed to teaching and directing student productions. He served as assistant professor of speech and drama at the Catholic University of America from 1941 to 1952 and as professor of theatre arts at Boston University from 1972 to 1979, was the director of the Juilliard School Theatre Center from 1975 to 1979, and from 1979 until he died he was professor of drama and head of the graduate directing department at the University of California, San Diego. Schneider suddenly died in 1984 when he was struck and killed by a motorcycle in London. He had just mailed a letter to Samuel Beckett.

Sources

"Register of Alan Schneider Papers – MSS 103." Mandeville Special Collections Library University of California, San Diego. https://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/findingaids/mss0103.html