Unpacking Beckett's Library

Beckett as a Book Collector

Samuel Beckett would probably not have called himself a book collector in the bibliophilic sense. If anything, he was a book giver. In a similar spirit, Edward Beckett generously donated the personal library of Samuel Beckett to the Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading in February 2023. As part of the agreement, the collection was given on loan for ten years to the Library of the University of Antwerp. With the support of an ERC Advanced Grant, the Centre for Manuscript Genetics at the University of Antwerp is working on a five-year project called ‘MARGINAL’ (‘Modern Authors Reading: Genesis in Authors’ Libraries’), which digitally reconstructs the personal libraries of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.

Unpacking Beckett's Library

Samuel Beckett’s library has a dynamic of its own; it bears witness to social networks; to friendships; to forms of authority that may be involuntarily imposed; to reading habits, like making dog ears or writing in margins; to female voices in a world that used to be male dominated; to fleeting moments of everyday life, like looking for any piece of paper to use as a place holder, which then remains tucked into the world of Shakespeare or Dostoevsky for decades.

When Beckett died in December of 1989, he left his impressive library behind in the Paris apartment he shared with his wife Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil.

A selection of 50 books from this collection was put on display for a short time only. The exhibition is built around 10 themes that speak to Beckett’s personal history, writings and social networks. Here, you'll find the exhibition catalogue. The texts were written by Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon, published in Journal of Beckett Studies, 35 (2026) 1.