Trinity College Library Exhibition Showcases New Beckett Material

Posted on: 04 April 2006

Trinity College Library celebrates the centenary of the birth of Samuel Beckett, one of the College’s most famous graduates, with an exhibition of its collection of Beckett-related material, some of which has not been on public display before. It was opened this evening (Tuesday 4 April) by Beckett’s nephew, Edward Beckett, and will run until June.

“The exhibition focuses on the unique place Trinity College had in the life of Samuel Beckett as a student, a teacher and a patron. Using the extraordinary collection of Beckett letters and manuscripts in the Library, it traces the development of the author’s style from the showy erudition of the young man to the hesitant precision of the mature artist,” explained exhibition curator Jane Maxwell, of the Library’s Department of Manuscripts.

“Items on public display for the first time include the earliest working drafts of the prose work Imagination Dead Imagine; one of the earliest pieces of Beckett writing in existence – an undergraduate essay in Italian; and Beckett’s correspondence with his life-long friend Barbara Bray”.

Beckett graduated with a first in Modern Languages from TCD in 1927 and was a lecturer in French in 1930-31. While studying, he represented the College in cricket, played golf and chess and joined the Motor Cycle Club and the Historical Society. He was conferred with an Honorary Degree by the University in 1959.

Letters written by Beckett to his friend and predecessor in Paris’s Ecole Normal Supérieure lecturing post, poet Thomas MacGreevy, were bequeathed by MacGreevy to Trinity and provide an invaluable insight into Beckett’s development as an author. Beckett was uncomfortable with the demands of lecturing at TCD principally because he had decided that he wished to dedicate himself to writing.  In preparation for this he read voraciously, in the 1930s, in the history of philosophy and English literature. Many of the notes he made during this period were donated to TCD’s Library by his nephew and niece, Edward Beckett and Caroline Beckett Murphy in 1997.

Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot received its Irish premiere in the tiny Pike Theatre in Dublin in 1955. The archives of this theatre came to Trinity College Library in 1995. Among the papers is the script for Godot which Beckett provided for the production in which it can be seen that Beckett often permitted Irish idioms or ‘hiberno-english’ to colour the language, when translating his own work into English. The Library also owns the annotated prompt copy of Godot which Beckett used when directing the first performance in France in 1953.

He generously presented some of his literary manuscripts to the Library in 1969, including a fragment of one of his novels, Malone meurt. Beckett remained on good terms with some of the Trinity staff and his letters to H.O. White and R.B.D. French form part of the Library’s collections, as do the letters to Arland Ussher, Bettina Jonič and the poet Nick Rawson.

“It has been over a decade since the last major exhibition of Beckett  material in Trinity College Library and in the intervening years the Library has acquired significant additional material to its holdings of Beckett manuscripts. The collection provides a rich resource for research within TCD and continues to attract many international scholars. This exhibition provides a unique opportunity to celebrate one of TCD’s most illustrious and influential alumni and to enjoy this newly acquired material,” commented Robin Adams, Librarian, TCD.

‘all this this here-‘: Samuel Beckett manuscripts at The Long Room, Trinity College Library 5 April – 30 June 2006, Mon – Sat: 9.30am-5pm; Sun (April – May) 12pm-4.30pm; Sun (June) 9.30am -4.30pm

Grant aided by the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism as part of the Beckett Centenary Festival.