In 1930, he published his first poem, “Whoroscope,” winning a reward of ten pounds in a poetry competition.

In addition to acting as one of Joyce’s favored assistants in the construction of the Work in Progress (later to be titled Finnegans Wake), Beckett began writing himself, inspired by the vibrant Parisian literary circle. James JoyceĪfter graduation, Beckett traveled to Paris where he first met the fellow Dubliner who would become a seminal influence and close friend, James Joyce. Moreover, he had the opportunity to watch American films and discover the silent comedies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin that would crucially influence his interest in the vaudevillian tramp. Beckett enjoyed the vibrant theater scene of post-independence Dublin, preferring revivals of J.M. Though he continued with sports, his attention turned increasingly to academics when at 17 he entered Trinity College, choosing French and Italian as his subjects. A well-rounded athlete, Beckett excelled especially in cricket, tennis, and boxing in his school days. He studied at Earlsfort House in Dublin, and then at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen (where Oscar Wilde had gone) where he first began to learn French, one of the two languages in which he would write. Though quite energetic, he enjoyed even as a small boy the quiet of solitude.

He was the second of two sons of a middle-class Protestant couple (his father managed a surveying firm) and grew up away from the rebellion waged nearby. Samuel Barclay Beckett was born without difficulty at Cooldrinach in Foxrock, County Dublin, on 13 April 1906, but grew old enough to fill the air with many different cries. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.

Samuel becketts waiting for