This title is a study of Samuel Beckett’s affinity with the British 18th century and of the influence of its writers on his work. Reading Swift, Pope, Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, Johnson, Gray, and other writers of this period, this study demonstrates how Becket was not only influenced by them but interprets them for us in a quite modern way. Beckett’s uniqueness is not questioned here, but this uniqueness is shown, paradoxically, to have its roots, at least in part, in his native literature of two centuries ago.