Much debate surrounds Beckett's true date of birth. It is documented as being the thirteenth of May 1906 yet most biographers argue deliberately that for reasons only speculated it occurred on the thirteenth of April. Thus placing it on Friday the thirteenth and on Good Friday. To say the least James Knowlson is quoted as saying, "The confusion is ironic, but no more than that."(1) Born Samuel Barclay Beckett in Foxrock, Dublin, he was the second son of William (Bill) Beckett, a building contractor, and Mary (May) Beckett, a former nurse. Beckett first attended Earlsfort House School in Dublin. At the end of which he was sent to Portora Royal School in Northern Enniskillen where he became interested in sports and played on the cricket and rugby teams. At the age of seventeen, still having a passion for athletics, Beckett became an undergraduate at Trinity College in Dublin studying French and Italian. It is here that Beckett's passion became levied towards literature. Two notable people to be recognized as having an early influence not only his passion and tastes for the art of words but also his attitude towards life were Professor Thomas Brown Rudmore of the Romance Languages and Trinity College lecturer Bianca Esposito, a private tutor learned in the Italian language.
Two years following, Beckett began a two-year exchange fellowship at L'Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, where he was introduced to his mentor and future friend James Joyce. It is through the inspiration of Joyce that Beckett went on to write his first fiction entitled, "Assumption." According to James Knowlson, one of the leading authorities on Beckett and the founder of the Beckett Archive (now the Beckett International Foundation) at the University of Reading, "It is highly innovative and avoids most traditional methods."(115) It is a story unique in the sense the Beckett uses metaphor and paradox instead of narrative plot, dialogue, or characterization. This work of art is a corner stone that projects an image of a young innovative writer as well as helps to distance himself as a writer from his mentor, James Joyce. In addition to its innovation, it is Knowlson who points out, "Assumption", as being, "Reflective of Beckett's own life and interests."(116) It stands as a powerful story foreshadowing the future themes of Beckett's work and his trite with pain.
It is in 1933 that Beckett's father dies leaving him a yearly annuity of two hundred franks, administered by his mother. It is in this year that Beckett moves to London to try journalism as a means of support. After five years and numerous publications Beckett, distress by signs of war, moves permanently to Paris. It is here that "Murphy his twelfth piece of work is accepted for publication by Routledge, after being rejected by forty-two publishers. This down fall was only one of the many complications suffered by Beckett.
On January 7, 1938 Beckett was stabbed just above the heart in a Paris street. While in the hospital he was visited by a pianist by the name of Suzanne Bumesail, who later became his wife. During the French Revolution, both became part of an information gathering resistance cell. In August of 1942 the cell was broken and the two escape to Roucsillon, where they remained till the end of the war. Upon which according to Linda Ben-Zvi, Beckett was awarded the, " Croix de guerre and Medaille de la Resistance,"(chronology) for his efforts in the French Resistance. Throughout the following years of his life he published over forty pieces of work culminating together to earn him the Nobel Prize in Literature in the year of nineteen sixty nine.
As early as 1986, Beckett's health had started to decline due to what he referred to as, "respiratory troubles,"(614) to James Knowlson. It was in fact due to the onslaught of emphysema. As time progressed his need for a respirator increased until the point that he spent every moment on it until his death. Another cause of his anxiety in his later years was the poor health of his wife and her hostile attitude towards her him. At the end of July 1988, after many numerous falls he finally landed himself into a position of fatality. It was to be the last fall of Beckett. He was housed at Le Tiers Temps (The Third Age) where he had his own room with a small adjoining bathroom. An oddity of which most of his friends and fellow writers took to discussing was the austerity of his room. By the time of his death he was very wealthy yet fittingly he choose to have a room of simplicity and humbleness. Due to the severity of his condition, diagnosed with emphysema, which causes a lack of oxygen to the brain, as well as an abnormal disease thought to be Parkinson's disease, he was in and out of consciousness for several days. Before he went on to pass away.
Samuel Beckett died at the age of eighty-three at one p.m. on Friday December 22, 1989. His funeral was a quiet one in the sense that it was both private and secret. He was buried beside his wife, Suzanne, in the Cimetiere de Montparnasse. For weeks after Beckett's burial his grave was covered in an enormous amount of flowers as well as little messages written in dozens of languages on any available scrap piece of paper. It was as Knowlson wrote, "a low-key departure for this quiet Dubliner." (618)