Damned to Fame: the Life of Samuel Beckett
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Damned to Fame: the Life of Samuel Beckett by James Knowlson
Damned to Fame is the brilliant and insightful portrait of Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett, mysterious and reclusive master of twentieth-century literature. Professor James Knowlson, Beckett's chosen biographer and a leading authority on Beckett, vividly re-creates Beckett's life from his birth in a rural suburb of Dublin in 1906 to his death in Paris in 1989, revealing the real man behind the literary giant. Scrupulously researched and filled with previously unknown information garnered from interviews with the author and his friends, family, and contemporaries, Knowlson's unparalleled work is the definitive Beckett biography of our time.
‘A landmark in scholarly criticism.. Knowlson is the world's largest Beckett scholar. His life is right up there with George Painter's Proust and Richard Ellmann's Joyce in sensitivity and fascination' * Daily Telegraph *
‘Essential, not only for the fact and details it offers, but for emphasising less well-known aspects of Beckett's life... the result is a clear, authoritative and exhaustively annotated biography' * Independent on Sunday *
‘A triumph of scholarship and sympathy... James Knowlson presents us here with a tremendous act of elucidation and synthesis, ballasted with hitherto unseen diaries and underpinned by the bonus of Beckett's own plain reminiscences... Its amplitude, its oceanic research and tireless intelligence, its pacing and verve and critical acuity mark it as one of the great post-war biographies. Whatever celestial or infernal zone he currently occupies, Beckett must be permitting himself a brief wintry smile at last' * Independent *
‘It is hard to imagine a fuller portrait of the man who gave our age some of the myths by which it lives' * Evening Standard *
‘Essential, not only for the fact and details it offers, but for emphasising less well-known aspects of Beckett's life... the result is a clear, authoritative and exhaustively annotated biography' * Independent on Sunday *
‘A triumph of scholarship and sympathy... James Knowlson presents us here with a tremendous act of elucidation and synthesis, ballasted with hitherto unseen diaries and underpinned by the bonus of Beckett's own plain reminiscences... Its amplitude, its oceanic research and tireless intelligence, its pacing and verve and critical acuity mark it as one of the great post-war biographies. Whatever celestial or infernal zone he currently occupies, Beckett must be permitting himself a brief wintry smile at last' * Independent *
‘It is hard to imagine a fuller portrait of the man who gave our age some of the myths by which it lives' * Evening Standard *
James Knowlson is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Reading where he founded the Beckett Archive (now the Beckett International Foundation). He was a friend of Samuel Beckett for twenty years and is his authorised biographer, publishing Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett with Bloomsbury in 1996. He has written or edited many other books and essays on Beckett and modern drama, including most recently Images of Beckett with theatre photographer John Haynes.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780747531692 |
| ISBN 10 | 0747531692 |
| Title | Damned to Fame: the Life of Samuel Beckett |
| Author | James Knowlson |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Year published | 1997-09-04 |
| Number of pages | 896 |
| Prizes | Winner of Southern Arts Literary Prize 1998, Winner of Southern Arts Literature Prize 1998, Short-listed for Whitbread Book Awards: Biography Category 1996, Short-listed for James Tait Black Memorial Book Prize: Biography 1996 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |