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Samuel Beckett: A Celebration

First Novels

More Pricks than Kicks More Pricks than Kicks. London: Calder & Boyars, 1966.

This mimeographed publication was a special "Hors Commerce" edition prepared by Beckett's British publisher for scholars who did not have access to the scarce original edition, which had been published in 1934 and had long since gone out of print.

Gift of Sir Joseph Gold
More Pricks than Kicks. London: Calder & Boyars, 1970.

a. This is an uncorrected proof copy of Beckett's first collection of stories which was originally published in 1934.

Gift of Sir Joseph Gold
b. This copy is number 60 of a specially bound and limited edition of 100 has been numbered and signed by the author and distributed "hors commerce" by the publisher.

Lammot du Pont Memorial Book Fund
Murphy. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1938.

This is the scarce first edition of Samuel Beckett's first published novel. Murphy was rejected by more than forty publishers before the firm of Routledge & Sons accepted it on the recommendation of the British author and critic Herbert Read.

Patrick Campbell Irish Literature Fund
Murphy Murphy. [Paris]: Bordas, 1947.

The first French edition of Murphy, which Beckett translated from the original English, was published by Bordas in 1947. Fewer than 100 copies were sold and when the firm of Les Éditions de Minuit became Beckett's French publisher, they reissued the book using unbound Bordas sheets bound in their own distinctive wrappers.

Murphy. New York: Grove Press, [1957.]First American edition.

The Grove Press publication of Murphy, along with Proust, in March 1957, marked the beginning of the lifelong association between Samuel Beckett and Grove Press founder Barney Rossett.
Dream of Fair to Middling Women, edited by Eoin O'Brien and Edith Fournier, with a foreword by Eoin O'Brien. Monkstown, Co. Dublin : Black Cat Press, 1992.

This is number 41 of an edition limited to 130 numbered and 20 lettered copies. Dream of Fair to Middling Women is Samuel Beckett's first novel. He completed writing it before Murphy, yet it remained unpublished at the time of his death. In later years, Beckett refrained from allowing Dream to be published, regarding it as a less-than-perfect product of his youth.
Dream of Fair to Middling Women, edited by Eoin O'Brien and Edith Fournier, with a foreword by Eoin O'Brien. London: Calder, [1993]. First British edition.

Introduction | Early Works | Trilogy | Godot | After Godot
Endgame | Krapp's | New Fiction and Drama | Fizzles | Poetry
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