The life

There are now three major biographies of Beckett.

Damned to Fame: the life of Samuel Beckett by James Knowlson (Bloomsbury, 1996) £7.99.
The best biography of Beckett, by a friend. It took 25 years to write and is an outstandingly empathetic and detailed account.

Samuel Beckett by Deirdre Bair (Cape, 1978) £7.99.
Often controversial, occasionally unreliable, this used to be the standard biography and still contains much of interest.

Samuel Beckett: the last modernist by Anthony Cronin (HarperCollins, 1996) £9.99.
A readable biography which aims to portray Beckett as both a writer of incomparable gifts and a human being with flaws, dreams and anxieties.