Georges Borchardt RIP

Georges Borchardt (1928-2026)

The death recently took place in New York of Georges Borchardt, the literary agent who was instrumental in promoting and developing the careers of Samuel Beckett and other notable twentieth century European writers in the United Sates.

Raised in France, Borchardt lived a clandestine life during the war because of his family’s Jewishness and suffered the trauma of his mother’s capture, transportation and death in Auschwitz. In 1947, he emigrated to the United States, eventually finding work as a literary agent. In 1953, his most important breakthrough came when Borchardt sold Waiting for Godot, Molloy and Malone Dies to Grove Press for $1,000 thus beginning his long association with the author and with Barney Rosset, principal of the famed New York publishing house.

Borchardt was also instrumental in introducing a host of other Europeans to the American market including Sartre, Barthes, Foucault, Duras and Robbe-Grillet as well as Ionesco and Frantz Fanon. The firm of Georges Borchardt, Inc. still represents the Beckett Estate in the United States, as well as over 200 other authors.

Always humble about his role, Borchardt refused to ascribe huge importance to his work. As he told a 2018 interview in The Paris Review: ‘All the people who claimed to have “discovered” Beckett—I mean, that’s nonsense. In a sense, we all discovered him, but it wasn’t a unique experience. That’s true of all of the French books that I’ve placed here, over two thousand of them.’

The Samuel Beckett Society acknowledges his huge contribution to the promotion of the author’s work and mourn his passing.