Samuel Beckett
1906 – 1989
Irish

Dramatist. His plays expressed the power of nameless and sourceless emotions (perhaps with an emphasis on anxiety), the power of silence (especially in a stage setting), and the general absurdity of life. An Irishman who chose to live in France, he wrote in both English and French, but his most famous works, including Waiting for Godot, were written in his adopted tongue. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.

Contemporaries
1865–1939William Yeats
1892–1963Patrick Twomey
1871–1909J. M. Synge
1847–1912Bram Stoker
1856–1950George Bernard Shaw
1874–1922Sir Ernest Shackleton
1954–1981Bobby Sands
1867–1935George Russell
1919–1999Dame Iris Murdoch
1879–1920Terence MacSwiney
1882–1941James Joyce
1865–1922Alfred Harmsworth
1861–1927J. B. Bury
1928–1989Dominic Behan
1923–1964Brendan Behan
1863–1951Daisy May Bates
Born 1948Gerry Adams