Waiting for Godot. A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. London: Faber & Faber, 1957. Third Impression. Publisher’s pale yellow cloth, spine lettered in red, in pictorial dust jacket. Light stain to lower portion of spine, slightly extending to adjacent portions of covers; slight bow to boards. Contents in nice bright condition.

Author’s Signed Presentation Copy, Inscribed on the title page: ‘For Bernard Sternfield with all good wishes Sam Beckett’ With ownership signature of B. Sternfield to head of half-title.

Beckett’s masterpiece was first composed and published in French and performed in 1953 at the Theatre de Babylone in Paris. It would later be translated into English by Beckett himself and published in New York by Grove Press in 1954.

Beckett said of his famous play: ‘I began to write Godot as a relaxation, to get away from the awful prose I was writing at the time.’ 

Godot established Beckett as ‘the most original and significant dramatist of our time…whatever it is ‘about’ [it] has recast the face of theater in our time.. immediately and simultaneously a succes de scandale and a piece a succes, it ran on in France, then moved through Germany and Italy, England, the United States — the world — to cheer, trouble, and awe hearts and minds as few other plays of modern times (from among those not designed for popular consumption) have done’ (Lake p. 65).