Ill Seen, Ill Said (SIGNED, Limited Edition #137/299) by Samuel Beckett - 1982

Ill Seen, Ill Said by Samuel Beckett

This is a pristine copy, tight and fine in its lovely marbled boards, with bright gilt-rule and lettering at the panels and spine. Also protected by a mylar dustjacket cover. Octavo, handsomely designed and printed by Henry Morris for the Lord John Press of Northridge. The 1982 First Limited Edition is numbered, and this is #137 of 299 copies - SIGNED by Samuel Beckett.

This late work from Samuel Beckett is the haunting picture of an old woman alone in a cabin, who watches the evening and the morning star and ventures out chiefly to visit a grave. In prose of great poetic beauty, which the author translated from his original French text Mal Vu Mal Dit in 1982, Beckett returns to the imagery of the Old and New Testaments to speculate on the great questions of human existence. One of the great writers of the 20th century, Beckett won the Nobel Prize in 1969. He is remembered primarily as a novelist and playwright, producing Waiting for Godot and the trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable, though he was also a poet and, when he chose to be, a discerning critic of great originality. Beckett continues to exert a powerful influence on other writers and interest in his work has grown since his death in 1989.

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Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in France for most of his adult life. He wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour. Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career. Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.