1.1 The Significance of Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in1906 and died in 1989. Being an Irish avant-courier novelist, playwright, theater director, and poet, his career as a writer can be roughly pided into three periods: his early works, up until the end of the Second World War in 1945; his middle period, extending from 1945 until the early 1960s, during which period he wrote what are probably his best-known works; and his late period, from the early 1960s until his deplorable death in 1989, during which his works tended to become shorter and his style more minimalist.