Beckett's Eighteenth Century

Beckett's Eighteenth Century is the first book-length study of Samuel Beckett's affinity with the British eighteenth century and of the influence of its writers on his work. Reading Swift, Pope, Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, Johnson, Gray, and other writers of this period, this study demonstrates how he was not only influenced by them, but interprets them for us in quite a modern way.

Beckett's Eighteenth Century adds substantially to our knowledge of Beckett's studies at Trinity College Dublin while at the same time it demonstrates how he reinterprets the earlier century for us.

Frederik N. Smith is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.