The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1: Waiting for Godot. With a Revised Text. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Douglas Mcmillan and James Knowlson. Volume 11: Endgame. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by S.E. Gontarski. Volume 111: Krapp’s Last Tape. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Jaes Knowlson. London: Faber & Faber, 1992. ; Volume IV: The Shorter Plays. With Revised Text for Footfalls, Come and Go and What Where. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by S.E. Gontarski. London: Faber & Faber. New York: Grove Press, 1999. All in dust jackets and housed in slipcases.

The series’ central value lies in demonstrating that Beckett’s texts were not fixed monuments but “living organism[s]” subject to continuous refinement through rehearsal. While directing his plays in Berlin, Paris, and London from the mid-1960s onward, Beckett kept meticulous notebooks for his own use, and these volumes decode them.

The editors – Dougald McMillan, James Knowlson, and S. E. Gontarski – transcribe Beckett’s handwriting (in English, French, and German), read beneath his erasures, and use the notebooks alongside his annotated copies to produce revised texts incorporating his many changes, corrections, additions, and cuts.