My starting point for Beckett is the four-volume Grove Press Centenary edition, containing seven novels, thirty-two dramatic works, thirty poems, fifty-four stories, texts and novellas, three pieces of criticism. Though not a true Collected Works, the set forms the essential part of the Beckett canon. I’m now reading Beckett’s Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable (sharing the reading with Emily).

Of the thirty or so writers that constitute the core of my literary exploration, I like to go beyond the primary works. Looking past the Grove Press collection I intend to read an enlightening biography, the letters and Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment. But which biography, and what other ‘divine analysis’ is worth reading?

Beckett distrusted biography as a form of knowledge but curiosity is irrepressible and Knowle’s biography the most illuminating. Beckett critical scholarship is vast and frequently dull, but what are the works that, to quote Hugh Kenner are not intended “to explain Samuel Beckett’s work but to help the reader think about it.” Which works are worth exploring? Starter list below, please help me to add any worthy titles (or to remove discredited or dull works):

1. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett – James Knowlson
2. The Irish Beckett – John P Harrington
3. Beckett Remembering: Remembering Beckett: Unpublished Interviews with Samuel Beckett and Memories of Those Who Knew Him  – James Knowlson
4. Flaubert, Joyce and Beckett: The Stoic Magicians – Hugh Kenner
5. Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study – Hugh Kenner
6. The Beckett Canon – Ruby Cohn
7. Beckett’s Dying Words – Christopher Ricks
8. “Where now? Who now?” (The Book to Come) – Maurice Blanchot
9. Know happiness – on Beckett (Very Little…Almost Nothing) – Simon Critchley
10. Beckett’s Fiction – Leslie Hill
11. Narrative Emotions: Beckett’s Genealogy of Love (Love’s Knowledge) – Martha Nussbaum
12. Saying “I” No More – Daniel Katz
13. Samuel Beckett: Photographs – John Minihan
14. Samuel Beckett (Overlook Illustrated Lives) – Gerry Dukes
15.  Beckett chapter (Theatre of the Absurd) – Martin Esslin
16. Beckett: “En Attendant Godot” and “Fin de Partie” (Critical Guides to French Texts) – J.P. Little
17. The Beckett Country – Eoin O’Brien
18. Samuel Beckett and the Meaning of Being – Lance St. John Butler
19. How it Was – Anne Atik
20. No Author Better Served – edited by Maurice Harmon
21. Samuel Beckett: Humanistic Perspectives edited by Morris Beja
22. Review of Contemporary Fiction, volume 7, #2, Samuel Beckett issue
23. The Mechanic Muse – Hugh Kenner
24. Just Play: Beckett’s Theater – Ruby Cohn
25. Innovation in Samuel Beckett’s Fiction – Rubin Rabinovitz
26. The Drama in the Text – Enoch Brater
27. Bram van Velde (Grove Press)
28. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett – Stanley E. Gontarski
29. On Beckett – Alain Badiou
30. Samuel Beckett’s self-referential drama – Shimon Levy
31. Samuel Beckett – Andrew Gibson
32. Samuel Beckett and the end of modernity – Richard Begam
33. Beckett and Poststructuralism – Anthony Uhlmann
34. Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory, and Text – Steven Connor
35. Beckett: A Guide for the Perplexed – Jonathan Boulter
36. Remembering and the Sound of Words: Mallarmé, Proust, Joyce, Beckett – Adam Piette
37. A Reader’s Guide to Samuel Beckett – Hugh Kenner