Beckett Samuel - Becketts Political Imagination

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Emilie Morin 2017

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First published 2017

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isbn 978-1-108-41799-0 Hardback

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For Nick

As I write these lines, a decade has elapsed since I began researching a book on Beckett and politics. The research support offered by the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York enabled me to write the actual monograph, and the book-in-progress was nurtured by years of conversations with friends, students and colleagues. Thanks are due to Derek Attridge and Hugh Haughton, for their support and generosity; to Michelle Kelly, for her input and responses to chapter drafts; to Lauren Arrington, Aisling Carlin, Victoria Coulson, David Dwan, Jason Edwards, Mary Fairclough, Helen Fulton, Kevin Killeen, Catherine Laws, Mary Luckhurst, Emma Major, Michael McAteer, Jon Mee, Linne Mooney, Bryan Radley, Lawrence Rainey, Reena Sastri, Freya Sierhuis, Helen Smith, Elizabeth Tyler, Claire Westall and Michael White, for research conversations about major and minor book matters; to Boriana Alexandrova, for enriching discussions and for the index; and to Megan Girdwood, Timothy Lawrence, Julia Mason, Jay James May, Alexander Price and Nick Wolterman, for stimulating dialogues. My appreciative thanks to Marthe Gautier and Tommy Murtagh, for kindly agreeing to speak to me about Samuel and Suzanne Beckett; to David Barnett, Emmanuel Blanchard, Raphalle Branche, Salem Chaker, Monique Courty-Garnier, Marie Cosnay, Masin Ferkal, Jim House, Daniel Lee and Renata Morresi, for their readiness to reply to research queries and their generosity; to Mark Nixon, for judicious advice and archival expertise; to Deirdre Bair, Maurice Harmon, James Knowlson and John Pilling, for helpful responses to Beckett-related questions; to Jean-Michel Rabat and Sen Kennedy, for their close reading of the manuscript as external peer-reviewers; and to Elizabeth Barry, Peter Boxall, Alan Warren Friedman, Julian Garforth, Jonathan Heron, Patrick Lonergan, Ulrika Maude, Rnn McDonald, James McNaughton and the late Rosemary Pountney, for thought-provoking discussions about Beckett. Many thanks also to Amlie and Olivier Cahn, Dominique and Bernadette Coco, Paul Cooney, Lisa Foran and Nilantha McPartland, Orlaith Fitzpatrick, Willow Coyle and Helen McClements, for their hospitality. It has been a pleasure to work with Ray Ryan at Cambridge University Press, and I thank him for his support and extraordinary dedication. I began assembling materials for this book after my doctorate at Queen's University Belfast; the research ethos of friends and mentors in the School of English at Queen's and at University College Dublin has remained a source of inspiration. Ultimately, none of this would have been possible without the support of my parents and siblings, Anne, Jean, Jean-Baptiste and Lose, and the support of the Melia family. I also owe more than I can express to Nicholas Melia, for years of intellectual nourishment, responses to chapter drafts and so much more. This book is dedicated to him, with all my gratitude for making so much else possible.

The research for this book was conducted in many archives and research libraries including the BBC Written Archives, Caversham; the Beckett International Foundation, University of Reading; the British Library; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Oxford's Taylor Institution Library; Trinity College Dublin; the National Library of Ireland; the Bibliothque Polonaise, Paris; the Bibliothque Sainte-Genevive, Paris; and the Institut Mmoires de l'Edition Contemporaine, Caen, where I was able to consult the Beckett collection by kind permission of Edward Beckett and Irne Lindon. Thanks are also due to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for the fellowship that enabled me to work on Ransom Center collections in 2012; to Elizabeth L. Garver at the Ransom Center, for supplying the cover image; to Lisa Eveson, Olivia Else, Margaret Dillon, Lisa Hopwood, Elaine Hickes and Keith Webster at the University of York library; Justine Sundaram at the Burns Library, Boston College; Jane Maxwell at Trinity College Dublin; Monica Thapar and Louise North at the BBC Written Archives; and York's F. R. Leavis Fund, for covering research and indexing costs.