The Making of Samuel Beckett's Molloy

This volume of the BDMP analyses the genesis of Beckett’s novel Molloy. Written in French in 1947, and translated into English by Beckett and the South African author Patrick Bowles in 1953-1955, Molloy is the first novel of the so-called ‘Trilogy’, followed by Malone meurt / Malone Dies and L’Innommable / The Unnamable. Through an examination of the surviving manuscripts, typescripts, and pre-book-publication extracts, this study is an attempt to understand Beckett’s work as both a product and a process. The critical vantage point is the notion of the ‘autograph’ as coined by H. Porter Abbott, who approaches Beckett’s published work as a form of ‘continuing incompletion’. In this book, we argue that, in order to further examine Beckett’s autography in detail, it may be useful to take his autograph manuscripts into account as well, not just those pertaining to the original version, in French, but also the drafts of the English (self-)translation. This volume is part of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (BDMP), a collaboration between the Centre for Manuscript Genetics (University of Antwerp), the Beckett International Foundation (University of Reading) and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (University of Texas at Austin), with the support of the Estate of Samuel Beckett. The BDMP (www.beckettarchive.org) digitally reunites the dispersed manuscripts of Samuel Beckett’s works and facilitates their examination. The project consists of two parts: a) a digital archive of Beckett’s a manuscripts, with facsimiles and transcriptions, organized in modules; b) a series of print volumes, analyzing the genesis of Beckett’s works.