Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Comment dire / what is the word

Catalogue

Due to an agreement with the Estate of Samuel Beckett and the publishers of Beckett's work, the digital edition of Comment dire / what is the word only contains draft versions leading up to the publication of the text (the so-called 'avant-texte'), including page proofs. It therefore excludes epigenetic material such as later annotated editions.

The transcriptions of the documents in this genetic edition are identified with the numbers of the manuscripts at the Beckett Archive, University of Reading (UoR). A full bibliographical description is made by Julian Garforth, Mary Bryden, and Peter Mills in Beckett at Reading: Catalogue of the Beckett Manuscripts Collection at the University of Reading (Reading: Whiteknights Press and the Beckett International Foundation, 1998). The following survey of the Comment dire / what is the word manuscripts only mentions the main bibliographical characteristics, indicating the type of document and inscriptions (copybook, holograph manuscript, typescript, carbon copy), the number of leaves, and the date (if indicated).

thumbnail image for MS-UoR-3316
Leaf through this NB

MS 3316/1

'Sporting-Herakles' exercise book, 34 leaves; manuscript material on folio 1verso - folio 4recto. The rest of the copybook consists of blank pages.

thumbnail image for MS-TCD-10948-1-707

MS 10948-1-707

A letter to Barbara Bray contains a holograph fair copy of Comment dire (TCD 10948-1-707r), with a false start (title underlined and the first three lines crossed out) on page 707v. The envelope is postmarked 30 October 1988. This version, chronologically situated between the 2 versions on MS 3316/1 f. 4r, has an extra 'folie' and an extra -e in 'vouloire' [sic] on line 31, and a deletion ('vouloir cr') toward the end of the text.

thumbnail image for MS-UoR-3317

MS 3317

Uncorrected typescript; same text as the last version in copybook MS 3316/1, f.4r
1 leaf

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MS 3506

Photocopied computer printout of uncorrected typescript of what is the word;
1 leaf