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The latest in the Cambridge Elements in Beckett Studies series has just been announced. Suzanne Dumesnil, Suzanne Beckett is authored by Emilie Morin, and is a study of Beckett’s long-time partner and wife Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil (1900-1989).
As Morin points out, little has been written about Suzanne probably because ‘as Samuel Beckett’s lifelong companion, she found herself in a peculiar quandary, owing to the amounts of support required by Beckett’s unease with success and with the business of writing, and owing to her deep awareness of the damage that fame can cause to everyday life, friendships, and freedom’. This Element offers the first full portrait of this elusive figure. It contextualises the texts she wrote under the name Suzanne Dumesnil, emphasises the significance of her artistic and literary accomplishments, and discusses her steady labour, her uncompromising discretion, and her profound reluctance to ever become a public figure as Beckett’s wife.
This work is particularly timely in the aftermath of the recent Beckett’s Elements conference in Edinburgh which shone a brighter light on Suzanne and others suggesting new areas of scholarship for the discipline in the future.
The Samuel Beckett Society 