These four last prose fictions by Samuel Beckett were originally published indiv
idually, and their composition spanned the final decade of his life. In "Company
" a solitary hearer lying in blackness calls up images from the far-off past. "I
ll Seen Ill Said" meditates upon an old woman living out her last days alone in
an isolated snow-bound cottage, watched over by twelve mysterious sentinels.
In "Worstward Ho", a breathless speaker unravels the sense of things, acting out
the unending injunction to 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' And "Stirrings
Still", published in the "Guardian" a few months before Beckett's death in 1989
, is the last prose work and testament of 'this great soothsayer of the age, and
of the aged' (Christopher Ricks).
The present edition includes several short
prose texts ("Heard in the Dark" I & II, "One Evening", "The Way", and, "Ceilin
g") which represent work in progress or works ancillary to the composition of th
ese late masterpieces.
