Steven Matthews is Professor of Modernist Literature and Beckett Studies at the University of Reading. He is Director of the Samuel Beckett Research Centre at that University. He has published widely on Modernism and Contemporary Literature, including books on Irish Poetry, on Yeats, and on T. S. Eliot, together with many essays on Beckett's work.
Matthew Feldman is Emeritus Professor at the University of Teesside, and Professorial Fellow at the University of York. He is author of the seminal Beckett's Books (2006) and Falsifying Beckett (2015). He is co-editor of two book series for Bloomsbury, Historicizing Modernism and Modernist Archives.

• Introduction


• Note on the Text


• Samuel Beckett's Philosophy Notes


• Ancient Philosophy


• Hellenistic-Roman Philosophy


• Medieval Philosophy


• Philosophy of Renaissance


• Philosophy of the Enlightenment


• Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century


• Appendix: Samuel Beckett's Notes on 'Augustine of Hippo and Porphyry on Plotinus'

This critical edition presents, for the first time, Samuel Beckett's full 'Philosophy Notes', which constitutes his most extensive unpublished text. The Notes reveal Beckett's interests in the history of western philosophy, and provided him with knowledge and ideas taken up the major work that won him international and enduring fame.