[BECKETT, Samuel]. KNOWLSON, James. Samuel Beckett: An Exhibition. Held at Reading University Library, May to July 1971. London: Turret Books. 1971.
8vo. Original black cloth; silver lettering on spine; upper edge gilt; grey endpapers; black and white photographs between p. 30 and p. 31; pp. [14], 13-123, [3]; slight scuffing to head and foot of spine, else near fine.
First edition, number 6 of 100 copies, inscribed by Beckett to Edward Lucie Smith, Jamaican born English writer and art critic. This catalogue was written by James Knowlson for an exhibition held at Reading University Library from May-July 1971. It includes an accompanying foreword by A.J. Leventhal.
"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh" (Waiting for Godot, 1953).
Awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature, Samuel Beckett is widely respected as one of the most prominent and influential writers of the 20th Century. Heavily inspired by the existentialist philosophy of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, alongside his contemporary Harold Pinter, Beckett helped to innovate the creative arts through the school known as The Theare of the Absurd. This movement sacrificed the typical state of a naturalist stage in preference of a minimalist one, as well as rejectimg conventional concepts such as traditional plotlines and logical language in order to explore the human condition. One of his most popular plays, Waiting for Godot (1953), (first performed in Paris’ Theatre de Babylone in 1953), cemented his title as one of the most important absurdist playwrights offering an extreme digression from Realism. The Irish critic Vivian Mercier would review the play, announcing that Beckett "has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats".
He was also revered as a prestigious avant-garde novelist with titles such as Murphy (1938), works which were greatly inspired by Beckett's admiration for the writing of his friend James Joyce. During WWII, Beckett was a member of the French Resistance Group Gloria SMH. Whilst in hiding, he began work on his novel Watt (1953).
This catalogue is a scarce portrayal of an intensely private and immense figure in the arts.
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