The letters written by Samuel Beckett between 1929 and 1940 provide a vivid and personal view of Western Europe in the 1930s, and mark the gradual emergence of Beckett’s unique voice and sensibility. The Cambridge University Press edition of The Letters of Samuel Beckett offers for the first time a comprehensive range of letters of one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century. Selected for their bearing on his work from over 15,000 extant letters, the letters published in this four-volume edition encompass sixty years of Beckett's writing life (1929–1989), and include letters to friends, painters and musicians, as well as to students, publishers, translators, and colleagues in the world of literature and theater. For anyone interested in twentieth-century literature and theater this edition is essential reading, offering not only a record of Beckett's achievements but a powerful literary experience in itself.
Contents
General introduction; French translator's preface George Craig; German translator's preface Viola Westbrook; Editorial procedures; Acknowledgments; Permissions; Abbreviations; Introduction to Volume I; Letters; Appendix; Profiles; Bibliography; Index.
Reviews
"[This book] makes a mighty thunk on the coffee table. But reading it is far from homework: the Beckett we meet in these piquant letters, most written when he was in his late 20s and early 30s, is rude, mordantly witty and scatological yet often (and this is perhaps the biggest surprise) affectionate and wholehearted."
-The New York Times
"This is an extraordinary work of scholarship on the part of its main editors... What Fehsenfeld and Overbeck have produced is a revelatory triumph."
-Los Angeles Times
"Another way of explaining Beckett’s exodus from English appears in the fantastic new The Letters of Samuel Beckett, 1929-1940. The first of four projected, this first volume is a marvel."
-Harper's Magazine
"The prospect of reading Beckett’s letters quickens the blood like none other’s, and one must hope to stay alive until the fourth volume is safely delivered."
-Tom Stoppard
"Knowing as we do that Samuel Beckett is the only writer who can sum up the agonies and ecstasies of the twentieth century, if we had any doubts as to his relevance today, they would be dispelled by the amazing treasure trove contained in his letters—at last we are made privy to the full range of his passion for art and beauty, which is neither naïve nor sentimental, to the pyrotechnics of his savage wit, and more lastingly perhaps, to his deep humanity."
- Jean-Michel Rabaté, Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania
"The editorial work behind this project has been immense in scale. Every book that Beckett mentions, every painting, every piece of music is tracked down and accounted for... The standard of the commentary is of the highest. . . The Letters of Samuel Beckett is a model edition. "
-J.M. CoetzeeThe New York Review of Books
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