Emilie Morin

Little has been written about Suzanne Beckett, née Déchevaux-Dumesnil (1900–1989). As Samuel Beckett's lifelong companion, she found herself in a peculiar quandary, owing to the amounts of support required by Beckett's unease with success and with the business of writing, and owing to her deep awareness of the damage that fame can cause to everyday life, friendships, and freedom. This Element offers the first full portrait of this elusive figure. It contextualises the texts she wrote under the name Suzanne Dumesnil, emphasises the significance of her artistic and literary accomplishments, and discusses her steady labour, her uncompromising discretion, and her profound reluctance to ever become a public figure as Beckett's wife.

Little has been written about Suzanne Beckett, née Déchevaux-Dumesnil (1900–1989). As Samuel Beckett's lifelong companion, she found herself in a peculiar quandary, owing to the amounts of support required by Beckett's unease with success and with the business of writing, and owing to her deep awareness of the damage that fame can cause to everyday life, friendships, and freedom. This Element offers the first full portrait of this elusive figure. It contextualises the texts she wrote under the name Suzanne Dumesnil, emphasises the significance of her artistic and literary accomplishments, and discusses her steady labour, her uncompromising discretion, and her profound reluctance to ever become a public figure as Beckett's wife.

Beckett's Political Imagination charts unexplored territory: it investigates how Beckett's bilingual texts re-imagine political history, and documents the conflicts and controversies through which Beckett's political consciousness and affirmations were mediated. The book offers a startling account of Beckett's work, tracing the many political causes that framed his writing, commitments, collaborations and friendships, from the Scottsboro Boys to the Black Panthers, from Irish communism to Spanish republicanism to Algerian nationalism, and from campaigns against Irish and British censorship to anti-Apartheid and international human rights movements. Emilie Morin reveals a very different writer, whose career and work were shaped by a unique exposure to international politics, an unconventional perspective on political action and secretive political engagements. The book will benefit students, researchers and readers who want to think about literary history in different ways and are interested in Beckett's enduring appeal and influence.

Beckett's Political Imagination charts unexplored territory: it investigates how Beckett's bilingual texts re-imagine political history, and documents the conflicts and controversies through which Beckett's political consciousness and affirmations were mediated. The book offers a startling account of Beckett's work, tracing the many political causes that framed his writing, commitments, collaborations and friendships, from the Scottsboro Boys to the Black Panthers, from Irish communism to Spanish republicanism to Algerian nationalism, and from campaigns against Irish and British censorship to anti-Apartheid and international human rights movements. Emilie Morin reveals a very different writer, whose career and work were shaped by a unique exposure to international politics, an unconventional perspective on political action and secretive political engagements. The book will benefit students, researchers and readers who want to think about literary history in different ways and are interested in Beckett's enduring appeal and influence.

Beckett's bilingual oeuvre has been approached from many angles, most of which stress its autonomy from understandings of Irishness emerging from the Irish Literary Revival. Emilie Morin shows that such autonomy is only apparent, and that Beckett's avant-garde practices remain bound to the exigencies that govern their very development.