ABSTRACT

In recent years, considerable effort has been made to understand Samuel Beckett’s artistic beginnings. Increasingly, details of these beginnings have emerged, and their conditions and contexts have been reconstructed. Important steps in this research include Jean-Michel Rabaté’s collection of articles on Beckett avant Beckett (1985), Eoin O’Brien and Édith Fournier’s edition of Beckett’s Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1992), John Pilling’s Beckett before Godot (1997), his edition of Beckett’s Dream Notebook (1999) and Brigitte Le Juez’s account of Beckett as a lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, Beckett before Beckett (2009). In 2009 Angela Moorjani indicated the importance of André Gide for the young Beckett who had been working on a monograph devoted to the author of Les Fauxmonnayeurs. The publication of Beckett’s German Diaries is announced for the near future.