He Didn’t Wait For Godot As Long

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE library's Special Collections, that gold mine of manuscripts, occasionally reveals a jewel. The latest is the recently, published first novel of Nobel Prize-winning novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett. A Dream of Fair to middling Women (sic), probably would have encountered fierce censorsbip had it been published when it was written 60 years ago. say literary historians. It tells of a voting man's love affairs as he travels through Europe. Five thousand copies were released last month by Ireland's Blackeat Press.

Beckett, who died in 1989, kept the novel under wraps. Perhaps fearing condemnation by the church in Ireland, he forbade Dartmouth from publishing the manuscript or even showing it to non-scholars—while he remained alive.

Dartmouth received the manuscriptfi'om one ofits long-time professors, Lawrence Harvey, in 1971. Harvey was given this and other manuscripts by Beckettwhen he befriended die author in Paris in 1961. Harvey went on to write one of the best critical studies of Beckettin 1970, Samuel Beckett:Poet and Critic.

When asked -about other noteworthy items contained within Special Collections, curator Philip Cronenwett said, cagily: "We have more than six million manuscripts just waiting to be used by students and scholars."

Beckett

PhilipCronenwett

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