Scholarly Essays

"You Call this 'Freedom'? The Fight to Publish and Produce Samuel Beckett's First Full-length Play"

Samuel Beckett completed his first full-length play, Eleutheria, in 1947. Unsuccessful in his attempts to get it produced, Beckett consigned Eleutheria to "the trunk." The play did no tfully emerge until five years after Beckett's death when his former American publisher, Barney Rosset, began a drawn-out battle with the Beckett estate to translate and then publish the work. The melodrama surrounding 'Eleutheria' did not end with publication, as it has yet to see the stage.

Download