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Samuel Beckett, grandad and me

Drawing of Samuel Beckett by the author’s grandmother.

This is the first in our planned series of guests posts authored by students of Dr Julie Bates, Assistant Professor in Irish Writing, who took part in a pilot scheme which gave them unusual access to the Library’s internationally significant Beckett manuscripts. Leah Kenny kindly provided the following text which she dedicates to her ‘Nanny and Grandad, who have always inspired me to create and follow my dreams’:

Continue reading “Samuel Beckett, grandad and me”

Still going on …

Chris Morash, Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing, Helen Shenton, University Librarian and College Archivist, and Dr Bernard Meehan the Director of Research Collections and Keeper of Manuscripts.
Chris Morash, Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing, Helen Shenton, University Librarian and College Archivist, and Dr Bernard Meehan the Head of Research Collections and Keeper of Manuscripts

Trinity College Library is celebrating today having announced the acquisition of the largest collection of Beckett correspondence ever to have been offered for sale at a public auction. The arrival of almost 350 letters and cards, written by Nobel Laureate Samuel Beckett to the artists Henri and Josette Hayden, cements the Library’s position as the research world’s number one repository for Beckett correspondence.

Trinity was enabled to make the purchase because of the generosity of a former staff member; William O’Sullivan, Keeper of Manuscripts from the 1950s to 1982, left a bequest to the Library which made this acquisition possible.

Beckett and his partner, later wife, Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, met the Haydens when both couples were in southern France evading discovery by the Nazis. The letters in this collection begin in 1947 and cover the difficult period in Beckett’s life during which his mother and his beloved brother Frank died. They also cover the most intensely fertile period of the author’s writing life when he was completing Waiting for Godot, and working on all three books of his trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable.

The letters are a wonderful mix of the profound and the hilarious and will be invaluable for both biographers and students of Beckett’s work.

Launching the collection today were the new Librarian, Helen Shenton, and the Head of Research Collections and Keeper of Manuscripts, Dr Bernard Meehan. Also present was Chris Morash, Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing at Trinity.

Jane Maxwell

Trinity College Library announces major acquisition of Samuel Beckett papers

Trinity College Library Dublin Announces Major Acquisition of Sa
Dr Bernard Meehan, Keeper of Manuscripts and Head of Research Collections with Professor Stanley E. Gontarski

Trinity College Library has acquired the Samuel Beckett manuscripts and the working library of renowned Beckett scholar Stanley E. Gontarski.

The announcement yesterday generated a lot of media interest. Jane Maxwell of M&ARL appeared on RTE One’s Morning Edition (you can see the interview from 01:03:20 into the programme), and a report appeared on the RTE Six One News (from 30:15 into the programme).

Other pieces appeared in the Irish Times, 98FM and on the Trinity College website.

Professor Stanley E Gontarski is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, and has twice been awarded Fulbright Professorships. He was among Samuel Beckett’s closest theatrical associates and is arguably the greatest living Beckett scholar.

Trinity College Library Dublin Announces Major Acquisition of SaThe highpoint of the new acquisition is that it includes several drafts of Beckett’s 1980 work Ohio Impromptu. This ‘playlet’ was written specifically at Professor Gontarski’s request for performance at an academic symposium in Columbus, Ohio, held in honour of Beckett’s 75th birthday. These early drafts, heavily annotated, are new to Beckett scholarship.

Also in this new acquisition is Gontarski’s  correspondence with Beckett from 1972; a copy of Three Plays (1984) revised by Beckett; and the proofs of Gontarski’s critical edition of Endgame, heavily revised and annotated by himself, Beckett and Beckett’s biographer James Knowlson

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Trinity Library has long been among only a handful of world destinations for research into Samuel Beckett’s literary archives and correspondence. The acquisition of Professor Gontarski’s manuscripts, along his entire working library of books by and about Beckett -including signed first editions – strengthens further the position of College in the field of Beckett studies.

The Library was enabled to acquire this collection due to Gontarski’s strong affection for the College and its place in Beckett’s life and work

The purchase of the Library material has been funded from the bequests of two notable alumni and former members of staff of the College: the historian Professor R B McDowell and Mr William O’Sullivan, formerly Keeper of Manuscripts.

An exhibition of highlights from the collection is on display in the Long Room.

M&ARL’s Beckett collections can be explored through the online catalogue.

Jane Maxwell

How do you ‘Fail better’?

HO!866

The Science Gallery’s new show – Fail better – is described as ‘A collection of inspirational failures’. The phrase ‘Fail better’ comes from Samuel Beckett’s characteristically difficult, characteristically glum late text Worstward Ho! (1983):

 

            ‘All of old.  Nothing else ever.  Ever tried.  Ever failed.  No matter.  Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better’.

 

Three manuscript drafts of Worstward Ho!, belonging to the Library, have been loaned to the exhibition, which is curated by Jane ní Dhulchaointigh and Michael John Gorman, and which runs until 27 April next.

 

The Science Gallery show asks the question ‘Does failure drive innovation?’ It celebrates ‘inspirational and serendipitous’ failure in the development of work by designers, inventors and scientists.  This is a utopian, even heroic view of failure, failure as a research tool, as a necessary part of an evolutionary process that, once learned from, will ultimately lead to success.

 

Other exhibits include Flann O’Brien’s hat and Christopher Reeve’s wheelchair. They have been selected by different individuals – including Anne Enright and Ranulph Fiennes – and each piece has a little essay, in the catalogue, to account for its inclusion in the show.

 

It takes a brave optimist – a scientist! – to put a positive spin on ‘Fail better’!

 

Darragh O’Donoghue