Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in Foxrock County, Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1906. He was the second of two sons of a Protestant Anglo-Irish couple. As a young boy, he was quite energetic and excelled at sports such as cricket, tennis, and boxing. He studied at Earlsfort House in Dublin and then at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, the same school Oscar Wilde had attended. It was here that he first began to learn French, one of the two languages in which he would write.

He received a degree in romance languages from Trinity College, Dublin. He taught in Belfast before going to Paris as lecteur d'anglais at the École Normale Supérieure; there, in 1928, he met fellow Dubliner James Joyce, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. Beckett was one of Joyce's assistants in the construction of Work in Progress, later titled Finnegan's Wake...