Murphy

SAMUEL BECKETT Murphy Edited by J. C. C. Mays Contents Title Page Preface Table of Dates Manuscript notes towards Murphy Murphy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 About the Author About the Editor Titles in the Samuel Beckett series Copyright Preface I Murphy is the first extended piece of writing that Beckett was satisfied with, and it is easy to see why. What he wrote before, in both verse and prose, had been dazzling, clever and inventive, and yet the same qualities evidently derived as much from an instinct to withhold as from the desire to share – talent gets paraded in front of what cannot bear examination. The accomplishment represented by Murphy therefore marks a turning point. It gave its author sufficient self-belief to sustain him through tedious negotiations with a succession of publishers, during which he refused to revise what he had written. It made it reasonable for him to set about translating the English publication into French himself as his next task, and later, following Godot, its publication in America prepared the way for a broader understanding of his writing throughout the English-speaking world. Murphy is the ......