George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance, though it has also come to refer to a specific genre of fiction involving a serious mood and conflict. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek: δρᾶμα, drama), which is derived from "to do" (Classical Greek: δράω, drao). The, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings deal sternly with prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy to make their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care and class privilege.

He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class, and most of his writings censure that abuse. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society The Fabian Society is a British intellectual socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World War I. The society laid many of the. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles.

Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend Charlotte Payne-Townshend was a wealthy Anglo-Irish woman, member of the Fabian Society and dedicated to the struggle for women's rights. She married George Bernard Shaw in 1898 after nursing him through an illness. They settled in Ayot St. Lawrence , a village in Hertfordshire, England (see Shaw's Corner), but traveled the world extensively, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St. Lawrence Ayot St Lawrence is a small village in Hertfordshire, between Harpenden and Welwyn. There are several other Ayots in the area, including Ayot Green and Ayot St Peter in a house now called Shaw's Corner Shaw's Corner was the primary residence of the renowned Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw; now a historic National Trust property open to the public. Inside the house, the rooms remain much as Shaw left them, and the garden and Shaw's writing hut can also be visited. The house is an Edwardian Arts and Crafts-influenced structure situated in the. Shaw died there, aged 94, from chronic problems exacerbated by injuries he incurred by falling.

He is the only person to have been awarded both This is a list of Academy Award records. This list is current as of the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony held on March 7, 2010 a Nobel Prize for Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" (original Swedish: den som inom litteraturen har producerat det utmärktaste i idealisk riktning). The & (1925) and an Oscar (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion Pygmalion is a 1938 British film based on the George Bernard Shaw play of the same title, and adapted by him for the screen. It stars Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller (adaption of his play of the same name), respectively.^[1] Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright because he had no desire for public honours, but accepted it at his wife's behest: she considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books to English.^[2]

Life

Early years and family

George Bernard Shaw was born in Synge Street, Dublin in 1856 to George Carr Shaw (1814–85), an unsuccessful grain merchant and sometime civil servant, and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, née Gurly (1830–1913), a professional singer. He had two sisters, Lucinda Frances (1853–1920), a singer of musical comedy and light opera, and Elinor Agnes (1855–76).

Education

Shaw briefly attended the Wesleyan Connexional School, a grammar school operated by the Methodist New Connexion, before moving to a private school near Dalkey Dalkey is a town located in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County, Ireland. It was founded as a Viking settlement and became an important port during the Middle Ages. According to John Clyn, it was one of the points through which the plague entered Ireland in the mid-14th century. In modern times, Dalkey has become a prosperous seaside suburb and a minor and then transferring to Dublin's Central Model School. He ended his formal education at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. He harboured a lifelong animosity toward schools and teachers, saying: "Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents".^[3] In the astringent prologue to Cashel Byron's Profession young Byron's educational experience is a fictionalized description of Shaw's own schooldays. Later, he painstakingly detailed the reasons for his aversion to formal education in his Treatise on Parents and Children.^[4] In brief, he considered the standardized curricula useless, deadening to the spirit and stifling to the intellect. He particularly deplored the use of corporal punishment, which was prevalent in his time.

When his mother left home and followed her voice teacher, George Vandeleur Lee, to London London is a leading global city being the world's largest financial centre alongside New York City, and has the largest city GDP in Europe. Central London is home to the headquarters of most of the UK's top 100 listed companies and more than 100 of Europe's 500 largest. London's influence in politics, finance, education, entertainment, media,, Shaw was almost sixteen years old. His sisters accompanied their mother^[5] but Shaw remained in Dublin with his father, first as a reluctant pupil, then as a clerk in an estate office. He worked efficiently, albeit discontentedly, for several years.^[6] In 1876, Shaw joined his mother's London household. She, Vandeleur Lee, and his sister Lucy, provided him with a pound a week while he frequented public libraries and the British Museum The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present.[a] reading room where he studied earnestly and began writing novels. He earned his allowance by ghostwriting Vandeleur Lee's music column,^[7][8] which appeared in the London Hornet. His novels were rejected, however, so his literary earnings remained negligible until 1885, when he became self-supporting as a critic of the arts.

Personal life and political activism

Influenced by his reading, he became a dedicated Socialist Socialism is an economic and political theory based on public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources and a charter member of the Fabian Society The Fabian Society is a British intellectual socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World War I. The society laid many of the,^[9] a middle class organization established in 1884 to promote the gradual spread of socialism by peaceful means.^[6] In the course of his political activities he met Charlotte Payne-Townshend Charlotte Payne-Townshend was a wealthy Anglo-Irish woman, member of the Fabian Society and dedicated to the struggle for women's rights. She married George Bernard Shaw in 1898 after nursing him through an illness. They settled in Ayot St. Lawrence , a village in Hertfordshire, England (see Shaw's Corner), but traveled the world extensively, an Irish heiress and fellow Fabian; they married in 1898. In 1906 the Shaws moved into a house, now called Shaw's Corner Shaw's Corner was the primary residence of the renowned Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw; now a historic National Trust property open to the public. Inside the house, the rooms remain much as Shaw left them, and the garden and Shaw's writing hut can also be visited. The house is an Edwardian Arts and Crafts-influenced structure situated in the, in Ayot St. Lawrence Ayot St Lawrence is a small village in Hertfordshire, between Harpenden and Welwyn. There are several other Ayots in the area, including Ayot Green and Ayot St Peter, a small village in Hertfordshire The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and Essex; it was to be their home for the remainder of their lives, although they also maintained a residence at 29 Fitzroy Square in London.

Shaw's plays were first performed in the 1890s. By the end of the decade he was an established playwright. He wrote sixty-three plays and his output as novelist, critic, pamphleteer, essayist and private correspondent was prodigious. He is known to have written more than 250,000 letters.^[10] Along with Fabian Society The Fabian Society is a British intellectual socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World War I. The society laid many of the members Sidney and Beatrice Webb Martha Beatrice Webb was an English sociologist, economist, socialist and reformer, usually referred to in association with her husband, Sidney Webb. Although her husband became Baron Passfield in 1929, she refused to be known as Lady Passfield and Graham Wallas Graham Wallas was an English socialist, social psychologist, educationalist, and a leader of the Fabian Society, Shaw founded the London School of Economics and Political Science The London School of Economics and Political Science, more commonly referred to as The London School of Economics or LSE, is a world leading specialist constituent college of the University of London in London, England, United Kingdom in 1895 with funding provided by private philanthropy, including a bequest of £20,000 from Henry Hunt Hutchinson to the Fabian Society The Fabian Society is a British intellectual socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World War I. The society laid many of the. One of the libraries at the LSE is named in Shaw's honor; it contains collections of his papers and photographs.^[11]

Final years

During his latter years, Shaw enjoyed attending to the grounds at Shaw's Corner. He died at the age of 94, of renal failure precipitated by injuries incurred by falling while pruning a tree.^[12] His ashes, mixed with those of his wife, Charlotte Payne-Townshend Charlotte Payne-Townshend was a wealthy Anglo-Irish woman, member of the Fabian Society and dedicated to the struggle for women's rights. She married George Bernard Shaw in 1898 after nursing him through an illness. They settled in Ayot St. Lawrence , a village in Hertfordshire, England (see Shaw's Corner), but traveled the world extensively, were scattered along footpaths and around the statue of Saint Joan in their garden.^[13]

Career

Writings

The International Shaw Society provides a detailed chronological listing of Shaw's writings.^[14] See also George Bernard Shaw, Unity Theatre.^[15] View Shaw's Works for listings of his novels and plays, with links to their electronic texts, if those exist.

Criticism

Shaw became a critic of the arts when, sponsored by William Archer, he joined the reviewing staff of the Pall Mall Gazette The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865. It was owned by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood. In 1921 The Globe merged into the Pall Mall Gazette, which itself was absorbed into the Evening Standard in 1923 in 1885.^[16] There he wrote under the pseudonym "Corno di Bassetto" ("basset horn The basset horn is a musical instrument, a member of the clarinet family")—chosen because it sounded European and nobody knew what a corno di bassetto was. In a miscellany of other periodicals, including Dramatic Review (1885–86), Our Corner (1885–86), and the Pall Mall Gazette (1885–88) his byline was "GBS".^[17] From 1895 to 1898, Shaw was the drama critic for Frank Harris' Saturday Review, in which position he campaigned brilliantly to displace the artificialities and hypocrisies of the Victorian stage with a theater of actuality and thought. His earnings as a critic made him self-supporting as an author and his articles for the Saturday Review made his name well-known.

He had a very high regard for both Irish stage actor Barry Sullivan's and Johnston Forbes-Robertson's Hamlets The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius for murdering the old King Hamlet, Claudius's own brother and Prince Hamlet's father, and then, but despised John Barrymore John Sidney Blyth Barrymore was an American actor, frequently called the greatest of his generation. He first gained fame as a stage actor, lauded for his portrayals of Hamlet and Richard III. His success continued with motion pictures in both the silent and sound eras's. Barrymore invited him to see a performance of his celebrated Hamlet, and Shaw graciously accepted, but wrote Barrymore a withering letter in which he all but tore the performance to shreds. Even worse, Shaw had seen the play in the company of Barrymore's then wife, but did not dare voice his true feelings about the performance aloud to her.^[18]

Much of Shaw's music criticism, ranging from short comments to the book-length essay The Perfect Wagnerite, extols the work of the German composer Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as they were later called). Unlike most other opera composers, Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his works.^[19] Wagner worked 25 years composing Der Ring des Nibelungen Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas or (to use the composer's preferred term) 'dramas' by the German composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883). The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied. The four dramas, which the composer described as a trilogy with a Vorabend ('preliminary evening'), are, a massive four-part musical dramatization drawn from the Teutonic mythology of gods, giants, dwarves and Rhine maidens; Shaw considered it a work of genius and reviewed it in detail. Beyond the music, he saw it as an allegory of social evolution where workers, driven by "the invisible whip of hunger", seek freedom from their wealthy masters. Wagner did have socialistic sympathies, as Shaw carefully points out, but made no such claim about his opus. Conversely, Shaw disparaged Brahms Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897), German composer and pianist, was one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by, deriding A German Requiem by saying "it could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker".^[20] Although he found Brahms lacking in intellect, he praised his musicality, saying "...nobody can listen to Brahms' natural utterance of the richest absolute music, especially in his chamber compositions, without rejoicing in his natural gift". In the 1920s, he recanted, calling his earlier animosity towards Brahms "my only mistake".^[19] Shaw's writings about music gained great popularity because they were understandable to the average well-read audience member of the day, thus contrasting starkly with the dourly pretentious pedantry of most critiques in that era.^[21] All of his music critiques have been collected in Shaw's Music.^[22] As a drama critic for the Saturday Review, a post he held from 1895 to 1898, Shaw championed Henrik Ibsen Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the godfather" of modern drama and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when Victorian values of family life and propriety largely held sway in Europe whose realistic plays scandalized the Victorian public. His influential Quintessence of Ibsenism was written in 1891.^[23]

Novels

Shaw wrote five unsuccessful novels at the start of his career between 1879 and 1883. Eventually all were published.

The first to be printed was Cashel Byron's Profession (1886),^[24] which was written in 1882. Its eponymous character, Cashel, a rebellious schoolboy with an unsympathetic mother, runs away to Australia where he becomes a famed prizefighter. He returns to England for a boxing match, and falls in love with erudite and wealthy Lydia Carew. Lydia, drawn by sheer animal magnetism, eventually consents to marry despite the disparity of their social positions. This breach of propriety is nullified by the unpresaged discovery that Cashel is of noble lineage and heir to a fortune comparable to Lydia's. With those barriers to happiness removed, the couple settles down to prosaic family life with Lydia dominant; Cashel attains a seat in Parliament. In this novel Shaw first expresses his conviction that productive land and all other natural resources should belong to everyone in common, rather than being owned and exploited privately. The book was written in the year when Shaw first heard the lectures of Henry George Henry George was an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax, also known as the "single tax" on land. He inspired the philosophy and economic ideology known as Georgism, which is that everyone owns what he or she creates, but that everything found in nature, most who advocated such reforms.

Written in 1883, An Unsocial Socialist was published in 1887.^[25] The tale begins with a hilarious description of student antics at a girl's school then changes focus to a seemingly uncouth laborer who, it soon develops, is really a wealthy gentleman in hiding from his overly affectionate wife. He needs the freedom gained by matrimonial truancy to promote the socialistic cause, to which he is an active convert. Once the subject of socialism emerges, it dominates the story, allowing only space enough in the final chapters to excoriate the idle upper class and allow the erstwhile schoolgirls, in their earliest maturity, to marry suitably.

Love Among the Artists was published in the United States in 1900 and in England in 1914,^[26] but it was written in 1881. In the ambiance of chit-chat and frivolity among members of Victorian polite society a youthful Shaw describes his views on the arts, romantic love and the practicalities of matrimony. Dilettantes, he thinks, can love and settle down to marriage, but artists with real genius are too consumed by their work to fit that pattern. The dominant figure in the novel is Owen Jack, a musical genius, somewhat mad and quite bereft of social graces. From an abysmal beginning he rises to great fame and is lionized by socialites despite his unremitting crudity.

The Irrational Knot was written in 1880 and published in 1905.^[27] Within a framework of leisure class preoccupations and frivolities Shaw disdains hereditary status and proclaims the nobility of workers. Marriage, as the knot in question, is exemplified by the union of Marian Lind, a lady of the upper class, to Edward Conolly, always a workman but now a magnate, thanks to his invention of an electric motor that makes steam engines obsolete. The marriage soon deteriorates, primarily because Marian fails to rise above the preconceptions and limitations of her social class and is, therefore, unable to share her husband's interests. Eventually she runs away with a man who is her social peer, but he proves himself a scoundrel and abandons her in desperate circumstances. Her husband rescues her and offers to take her back, but she pridefully refuses, convinced she is unworthy and certain that she faces life as a pariah to her family and friends. The preface, written when Shaw was 49, expresses gratitude to his parents for their support during the lean years while he learned to write and includes details of his early life in London.

Shaw's first novel, Immaturity, was written in 1879 but was the last one to be printed in 1931.^[28] It relates tepid romances, minor misfortunes and subdued successes in the developing career of Robert Smith, an energetic young Londoner and outspoken agnostic. Condemnation of alcoholic behavior is the prime message in the book, and derives from Shaw's familial memories. This is made clear in the books's preface, which was written by the mature Shaw at the time of its belated publication. The preface is a valuable resource because it provides autobiographical details not otherwise available.

Short stories

A collection of Shaw's short stories, The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales, was published in 1934.^[29] The Black Girl, an enthusiastic but misguided convert to Christianity, goes searching for God, whom she believes to be an actual person. Written as an allegory, somewhat reminiscent of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan and published in February, 1678. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been out of print, Shaw uses her adventures to expose flaws and fallacies in the religions of the world. At the story's happy ending, the Black Girl quits her searchings in favor of rearing a family with the aid of a red-haired Irishman who has no metaphysical inclination.

One of the Lesser Tales is The Miraculous Revenge (1885), which relates the misadventures of an alcoholic investigator while he probes the mystery of a graveyard—full of saintly corpses—that migrates across a stream to escape association with the body of a newly buried sinner. The story is wildly different from Shaw's usual style.

Plays

The texts of plays by Shaw mentioned in this section, with the dates when they were written and first performed can be found in Complete Plays and Prefaces.^[30] Shaw began working on his first play destined for production, Widowers' Houses Widowers' Houses was the first play by Nobel Prize in literature winner George Bernard Shaw to be staged. It premièred on 9 December 1892 at the Royalty Theatre, under the auspices of the Independent Theatre Society — a subscription club, formed to escape the Lord Chamberlain's Office censorship, in 1885 in collaboration with critic William Archer, who supplied the structure. Archer decided that Shaw could not write a play, so the project was abandoned. Years later, Shaw tried again and, in 1892, completed the play without collaboration. Widowers' Houses, a scathing attack on slumlords, was first performed at London's Royalty Theatre on 9 December 1892. Shaw would later call it one of his worst works, but he had found his medium. His first significant financial success as a playwright came from Richard Mansfield's American production of The Devil's Disciple The Devil's Disciple is an 1897 play written by Irish dramatist, George Bernard Shaw. The play is Shaw's eighth, and after Richard Mansfield's original 1897 American production it was his first financial success, which helped to affirm his career as a playwright. It was published in Shaw's 1901 collection Three Plays for Puritans together with (1897). He went on to write 63 plays, most of them full-length.

Often his plays succeeded in the United States and Germany before they did in London. Although major London productions of many of his earlier pieces were delayed for years, they are still being performed there. Examples include Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893), Arms and the Man Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw. Its title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin: "Arma virumque cano" . (Perseus Project A.1.1) (1894), Candida (1894) and You Never Can Tell (1897).

Shaw's plays, like those of Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete. His parents were successful Dublin intellectuals, and from an early age he was tutored at home, where he showed his intelligence, becoming fluent in French and German. He attended boarding school for six years, then matriculated to university at seventeen years, were fraught with incisive humor, which was exceptional among playwrights of the Victorian era; both authors are remembered for their comedy.^[31] However, Shaw's wittiness should not obscure his important role in revolutionizing British drama. In the Victorian Era Victoria was the Queen regnant of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837, and the first Empress of India of the British Raj from 1 May 1876, until her death. Her reign as the Queen lasted 63 years and 7 months, longer than that of any other British monarch before or since, and her reign is the longest of any female, the London stage had been regarded as a place for frothy, sentimental entertainment. Shaw made it a forum for considering moral, political and economic issues, possibly his most lasting and important contribution to dramatic art. In this, he considered himself indebted to Henrik Ibsen Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the godfather" of modern drama and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when Victorian values of family life and propriety largely held sway in Europe, who pioneered modern realistic drama, meaning drama designed to heighten awareness of some important social issue. Significantly, Widowers' Houses — an example of the realistic genre — was completed after William Archer, Shaw's friend, had translated some of Ibsen's plays to English and Shaw had written The Quintessence of Ibsensism.^[32]

As Shaw's experience and popularity increased, his plays and prefaces became more voluble about reforms he advocated, without diminishing their success as entertainments. Such works, including Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), Man and Superman Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw was written in 1903 as a four act drama, responding to those who had questioned Shaw as to why he had never written a play based on the Don Juan theme. Man and Superman opened at The Royal Court Theatre in London on 23 May 1905 without the performance of the 3rd Act. A part of the act, Don Juan in Hell , was (1903), Major Barbara (1905) and The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), display Shaw's matured views, for he was approaching 50 when he wrote them. From 1904 to 1907, several of his plays had their London premieres in notable productions at the Court Theatre, managed by Harley Granville-Barker Harley Granville-Barker was an English actor, director, producer, critic and playwright and J. E. Vedrenne. The first of his new plays to be performed at the Court Theatre, John Bull's Other Island John Bull's Other Island is a comedy about Ireland, written by G. Bernard Shaw in 1904. Shaw himself was born in Dublin, yet this is the only play of his where he thematically returned to his homeland. s:John Bull's Other Island (1904), while not especially popular today, made his reputation in London when King Edward VII Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death on 6 May 1910. He was the first British monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which was renamed the House of Windsor by his son, George V laughed so hard during a command performance that he broke his chair.^[33]

By the 1910s, Shaw was a well-established playwright. New works such as Fanny's First Play (1911) and Pygmalion (1912)—on which the famous, award-winning musical My Fair Lady My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phoneticist, so she can pass as a lady (1956) is based—had long runs in front of large London audiences. A musical adaptation of Arms and the Man Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw. Its title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin: "Arma virumque cano" . (Perseus Project A.1.1) (1894)—The Chocolate Soldier by Oscar Straus (1908)—was also very popular, but Shaw detested it and, for the rest of his life, forbade musicalization of his work, including a proposed Franz Lehár Franz Lehár , known in Hungarian as Lehár Ferenc, was an Austrian composer of Hungarian descent, mainly known for his operettas operetta based on Pygmalion; the Broadway musical My Fair Lady could be produced only after Shaw's death. There is, however, a sharp difference between The Chocolate Soldier and My Fair Lady which Shaw never anticipated, and perhaps never could have; The Chocolate Soldier uses none of Shaw's own dialogue, while My Fair Lady, despite having a few speeches entirely written by librettist Alan Jay Lerner Alan Jay Lerner was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film. He won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors, uses generous chunks of Shaw's dialogue unchanged.

Shaw's outlook was changed by World War I, which he uncompromisingly opposed despite incurring outrage from the public as well as from many friends. His first full-length piece, presented after the War, written mostly during it, was Heartbreak House Heartbreak House is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1919. According to A. C. Ward, the work argues that "cultured, leisured Europe" was drifting toward destruction, and that "Those in a position to guide Europe to safety failed to learn their proper business of political navigation" (1919). A new Shaw had emerged—the wit remained, but his faith in humanity had dwindled. In the preface to Heartbreak House he said:

"It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orators of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will. Thus our democracy moves in a vicious circle of reciprocal worthiness and unworthiness."^[34]

Shaw had previously supported gradual democratic change toward socialism, but now he saw more hope in government by benign strong men. This sometimes made him oblivious to the dangers of dictatorships. Near his life's end that hope failed him too. In the first act of Buoyant Billions (1946–48), his last full-length play, his protagonist asks:

"Why appeal to the mob when ninetyfive per cent of them do not understand politics, and can do nothing but mischief without leaders? And what sort of leaders do they vote for? For Titus Oates and Lord George Gordon with their Popish plots, for Hitlers who call on them to exterminate Jews, for Mussolinis who rally them to nationalist dreams of glory and empire in which all foreigners are enemies to be subjugated."^[35]

In 1921, Shaw completed Back to Methuselah Back to Methuselah , by George Bernard Shaw consists of a preface (An Infidel Half Century) and a series of five plays: In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden), The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day, The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170, Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000, and As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920, his "Metabiological Pentateuch". The massive, five-play work starts in the Garden of Eden and ends thousands of years in the future; it showcases Shaw's postulate that a "Life Force" directs evolution toward ultimate perfection by trial and error. Shaw proclaimed the play a masterpiece, but many critics disagreed. The theme of a benign force directing evolution reappears in Geneva (1938), wherein Shaw maintains humans must develop longer lifespans in order to acquire the wisdom needed for self-government.

Methuselah was followed by Saint Joan (1923), which is generally considered to be one of his better works. Shaw had long considered writing about Joan of Arc, and her canonization in 1920 supplied a strong incentive. The play was an international success, and is believed to have led to his Nobel Prize in Literature.^[36] The citation praised his work as "...marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty". At this time Prime Minister David Lloyd George was considering recommending to the King Shaw's admission to the Order of Merit, but the place was instead given to J. M. Barrie.^[36] Shaw rejected a knighthood.^[36] It was not until 1946 that the government of the day arranged for an informal offer of the Order of Merit to be made: Shaw declined, replying that "merit" in authorship could only be determined by the posthumous verdict of history.^[36]

He wrote plays for the rest of his life, but very few of them are as notable—or as often revived—as his earlier work. The Apple Cart (1929) was probably his most popular work of this era. Later full-length plays like Too True to Be Good (1931), On the Rocks (1933), The Millionairess (1935), and Geneva (1938) have been seen as marking a decline. His last significant play, In Good King Charles Golden Days has, according to St. John Ervine,^[37] passages that are equal to Shaw's major works.

Shaw's published plays come with lengthy prefaces. These tend to be more about Shaw's opinions on the issues addressed by the plays than about the plays themselves. Often his prefaces are longer than the plays they introduce. For example, the Penguin Books edition of his one-act The Shewing-up Of Blanco Posnet (1909) has a 67-page preface for the 29-page playscript.

Polemics

In a letter to Henry James dated 17 January 1909,^[38] Shaw said:

"I, as a Socialist, have had to preach, as much as anyone, the enormous power of the environment. We can change it; we must change it; there is absolutely no other sense in life than the task of changing it. What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods."^[39]

Thus he viewed writing as a way to further his humanitarian and political agenda. His works were very popular because of their comedic content, but the public tended to disregard his messages and enjoy his work as pure entertainment. He was acutely aware of that. His preface to Heartbreak House (1919) attributes the rejection to the need of post-World War I audiences for frivolities, after four long years of grim privation, more than to their inborn distaste of instruction. His crusading nature led him to adopt and tenaciously hold a variety of causes, which he furthered with fierce intensity, heedless of opposition and ridicule. For example, Common Sense about the War (1914) lays out Shaw's strong objections at the onset of World War I.^[40] His stance ran counter to public sentiment and cost him dearly at the box-office, but he never compromised.^[41]

Shaw joined in the public opposition to vaccination against smallpox, calling it "a particularly filthy piece of witchcraft",^[42][43] despite having nearly died from the disease when he contracted it in 1881. In the preface to Doctor’s Dilemma he made it plain he regarded traditional medical treatment as dangerous quackery that should be replaced with sound public sanitation, good personal hygiene and diets devoid of meat. Shaw became a vegetarian while he was twenty-five, after hearing a lecture by H.F. Lester.^[44] In 1901, remembering the experience, he said "I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian."^[45] As a staunch vegetarian, he was a firm anti-vivisectionist and antagonistic to cruel sports for the remainder of his life. The belief in the immorality of eating animals was one of the Fabian causes near his heart and is frequently a topic in his plays and prefaces. His position, succinctly stated, was "A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses."^[46]

As well as plays and prefaces, Shaw wrote long political treatises, such as Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889),^[47] and The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1912),^[48] a 495-page book detailing all aspects of socialistic theory as Shaw interpreted it. Excerpts of the latter were republished in 1928 as Socialism and Liberty,^[49] Late in his life he wrote another guide to political issues, Everybody's Political What's What (1944).

Correspondence

Shaw corresponded with an array of people, many of them well-known. His letters to and from Mrs. Patrick Campbell were adapted for the stage by Jerome Kilty as Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters,^[50] as was his correspondence with the poet Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (the intimate friend of Oscar Wilde), into the drama Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship by Anthony Wynn. His letters to the prominent actress, Ellen Terry,^[51] to the boxer Gene Tunney,^[52] and to H.G. Wells,^[53] have also been published. Eventually the volume of his correspondence became insupportable, as can be inferred from apologetic letters written by assistants.^[54] Shaw campaigned against the executions of the rebel leaders of the Easter Rising, and he became a personal friend of the Cork-born IRA leader Michael Collins, whom he invited to his home for dinner while Collins was negotiating the Anglo-Irish Treaty with Lloyd George in London. After Collins's assassination in 1922, Shaw sent a personal message of condolence to one of Collins's sisters. He had an enduring friendship with G. K. Chesterton, the Roman Catholic-convert British writer.^[55] Shaw also enjoyed a personal friendship with T.E. Lawrence, known most notably for his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom and his role as liaison for the Arab revolt during World War I. Lawrence even took the name Shaw sometime after the war.

Another friend was the composer Edward Elgar. The latter dedicated one of his late works, Severn Suite, to Shaw; and Shaw exerted himself (eventually with success) to persuade the BBC to commission from Elgar a third symphony, though this piece remained incomplete at Elgar's death. Shaw's correspondence with the motion picture producer Gabriel Pascal, who was the first to successfully bring Shaw's plays to the screen and who later tried to put into motion a musical adaptation of Pygmalion, but died before he could realize it, is published in a book titled Bernard Shaw and Gabriel Pascal.,^[56] A stage play by Hugh Whitemore, The Best of Friends, provides a window on the friendships of Dame Laurentia McLachlan, OSB (late Abbess of Stanbrook) with Sir Sydney Cockerell and Shaw through adaptations from their letters and writings. A television adaptation of the play, aired on PBS, starred John Gielgud as Cockerell, Wendy Hiller as Laurentia, and Patrick McGoohan as Shaw. It is available on DVD.

Photography

Shaw bought his first camera in 1898 and was an active amateur photographer until his death in 1950. Prior to 1898 Shaw had been an early supporter of photography as a serious art form and includes reviews of photographic exhibitions among his writings.

The photographs document a prolific literary and political life - Shaw's friends, travels, politics, plays, films and home life. It also records his experiments with photography over 50 years and for the photographic historian provides a record of the development of the photographic and printing techniques available to the amateur photographer between 1898 and 1950.

Politics

Shaw asserted that each social class strove to serve its own ends, and that the upper and middle classes won in the struggle while the working class lost. He condemned the democratic system of his time, saying that workers, ruthlessly exploited by greedy employers, lived in abject poverty and were too ignorant and apathetic to vote intelligently.^[57] He believed this deficiency would ultimately be corrected by the emergence of long-lived supermen with experience and intelligence enough to govern properly. He called the developmental process elective breeding but it is sometimes referred to as shavian eugenics, largely because he thought it was driven by a "Life Force" that led women—subconsciously—to select the mates most likely to give them superior children.^[58] The outcome Shaw envisioned is dramatised in Back to Methuselah, a monumental play depicting human development from its beginning in the Garden of Eden until the distant future.^[59]

In 1882, influenced by Henry George's views on land nationalization, Shaw concluded that private ownership of land and its exploitation for personal profit was a form of theft, and advocated equitable distribution of land and natural resources and their control by governments intent on promoting the commonwealth. Shaw believed that income for individuals should come solely from the sale of their own labour and that poverty could be eliminated by giving equal pay to everyone. These concepts led Shaw to apply for membership of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), led by H. M. Hyndman who introduced him to the works of Karl Marx. Shaw never joined the SDF, which favoured forcible reforms. Instead, in 1884, he joined the newly formed Fabian Society, which accorded with his belief that reform should be gradual and induced by peaceful means rather than by outright revolution.^[60] Shaw was an active Fabian. He wrote many of their pamphlets,^[47] lectured tirelessly on behalf of their causes and provided money to set up the The New Age, an independent socialist journal. As a Fabian, he participated in the formation of the Labour Party. The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism^[48] provides a clear statement of his socialistic views. As evinced in plays like Major Barbara and Pygmalion, class struggle is a motif in much of Shaw's writing.

Shaw opposed the execution of Sir Roger Casement in 1916. He wrote a letter "as an Irishman"^[61] to The Times, which they rejected, but it was subsequently printed by both the Manchester Guardian on 22 July 1916, and by the New York American on 13 August 1916.

After visiting the USSR in the 1930s where he met Stalin, Shaw became a supporter of the Stalinist USSR. On 11 October 1931 he broadcast a lecture on American national radio telling his audience that any 'skilled workman...of suitable age and good character' would be welcomed and given work in the Soviet Union.^[62] Tim Tzouliadis asserts that hundreds of Americans responded to his suggestion and left for the USSR.^[63]

A recent documentary, The Soviet Story, includes an extensive clip of film in which George Bernard Shaw, facing the camera, is apparently speaking in favour of discarding those members of society 'who are no use in this world':

You must all know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight in the social boat, if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the organizations of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.^[64]

Shaw echoes this sentiment in the preface to his play On the Rocks (1933) writing:

But the most elaborate code of this sort would still have left unspecified a hundred ways in which wreckers of Communism could have sidetracked it without ever having to face the essential questions: are you pulling your weight in the social boat? are you giving more trouble than you are worth? have you earned the privilege of living in a civilized community? That is why the Russians were forced to set up an Inquisition or Star Chamber, called at first the Cheka and now the Gay Pay Oo (Ogpu), to go into these questions and "liquidate" persons who could not answer them satisfactorily.

^[65]

Yet, Shaw also maintained that the killing should be humane. In the preface to On the Rocks, Shaw includes a criticism of the pogroms conducted by the State Political Directorate (OGPU). He compares their logic to that of other societies throughout human history, and writes:

When the horrors of anarchy force us to set up laws that forbid us to fight and torture one another for sport, we still snatch as every excuse for declaring individuals outside the protection of law and torturing them to our hearts' content. [...] The concentration of British and American attention on the intolerances of Fascism and Communism creates an illusion that they do not exist elsewhere; but they exist everywhere, and must be met, not with ridiculous hotheaded attacks on Germany, Italy, and Russia, but by a restatement of the case for Toleration in general.

The preface concludes:

Put shortly and undramatically the case is that a civilization cannot progress without criticism, and must therefore, to save itself from stagnation and putrefaction, declare impunity for criticism. This means impunity not only for propositions which, however novel, seem interesting, statesmanlike, and respectable, but for propositions that shock the uncritical as obscene, seditious, blasphemous, heretical, and revolutionary.^[65]

In an open letter to the Manchester Guardian in 1933, he dismissed stories of a Soviet famine as slanderous, and contrasts them with the hardships then-current in the West during the Great Depression:

We desire to record that we saw nowhere evidence of such economic slavery, privation, unemployment and cynical despair of betterment as are accepted as inevitable and ignored by the press as having “no news value” in our own countries."^[66]

In the preface to On The Rocks he wrote:

It sounds simple; but the process requires better planning than is always forthcoming (with local famines and revolts as the penalty); for while the grass grows the steed starves; and when education means not only schools and teachers, but giant collective farms equipped with the most advanced agricultural machinery, which means also gigantic engineering works for the production of the machinery, you may easily find that you have spent too much on these forms of capitalization and are running short of immediately consumable goods, presenting the spectacle of the nation with the highest level of general culture running short of boots and tightening its belt for lack of sufficient food. I must not suggest that this has occurred all over Russia; for I saw no underfed people there; and the children were remarkably plump. And I cannot trust the reports; for I have no sooner read in The Times a letter from Mr Kerensky assuring me that in the Ukraine the starving people are eating one another, than M. Herriot, the eminent French statesman, goes to Russia and insists on visiting the Ukraine so that he may have ocular proof of the alleged cannibalism, but can find no trace of it. Still, between satiety and starvation mitigated by cannibalism there are many degrees of shortage; and it is no secret that the struggle of the Russian Government to provide more collective farms and more giant factories to provide agricultural machinery for them has to be carried on against a constant clamor from the workers for new boots and clothes, and more varied food and more of it: in short, less sacrifice of the present to the future.^[65]

He included an attack on Lysenkoism in a brief letter to Labour Monthly, in which he wrote: "Marxism seems to have gone as mad as Weismannism; and it is no longer surprising that Marx had to insist that he was not a Marxist."^[67]

Despite Shaws sceptism about the creation of the Irish free state, he was supportive of Eamonn de Valera stance on the second world war, including his policy of refusing to fall in line with the Allies demand towards neutral countries on refusing to provide asylum to Axis refugees during the war. According to Shaw "The voice of the Irish gentleman and Spanish grandee was a welcome relief from the chorus of retaliatory rancor and self- righteousness then deafening us". He controversially supported De Valera's letter of Condolences on the news of the death of the Führer, but only because he felt that Britain and the Allies had as much to be guilty about as the Germans.^{[citation needed]}

Position on eugenics

Shaw was a proponent of a the theory of "eugenics" that believed in the improvement of the human race through selective reproduction.^[68] Advocates of this theory feared society was at risk due to a declining gene pool because inferior people were breeding much more rapidly than the better ones. They advocated for public policies that would prevent this. Shaw claimed only eugenics could save mankind.^[69] Shaw even suggested people should have to regularly appear before a board to justify their existence.^[70]

Shaw wrote that "the only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man"; the selection of partners "without consideration of rank or wealth" would come about when personal incomes were made equal.^[71][72]

He was a critic of the employment of eugenics to advance racist ideals.^[65] At a meeting of the Eugenics Education Society of 3 March 1910 he suggested the need to use a "lethal chamber" to solve the problem. Shaw said: "We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment …" Some maintain this was an example of Shaw satirically employing the reductio ad absurdum argument against the eugenicists' wilder dreams, although many in the press took his words out of their satirical context. Dan Stone wrote: "Either the press believed Shaw to be serious, and vilified him, or recognised the tongue-in-cheek nature of his lecture."^[73][74] However, Shaw also called for the development of a "deadly" but "humane" gas for the purpose of killing those unfit to live.^[75]

Religion

In his will, Shaw stated that his "religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative revolution." He requested that no one should imply that he accepted the beliefs of any specific religious organization, and that no memorial to him should "take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice."^[76]

Legacy

In his old age, Shaw was a household name both in Britain and Ireland, and was famed throughout the world. His ironic wit endowed English with the adjective "Shavian", used to characterize observations such as: "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world." Concerned about the vagaries of English spelling, Shaw willed a portion of his wealth (probated at £367,233 13s)^[77] to fund the creation of a new phonemic alphabet for the English language.^[78] However, the money available was insufficient to support the project, so it was neglected for a time. This changed when his estate began earning significant royalties from the rights to Pygmalion after My Fair Lady—the musical adapted from Pygmalion by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe—became a hit. However, the Public Trustee found the intended trust to be invalid because its intent was to serve a private interest instead of a charitable purpose, and as a non-charitable purpose trust, it could not be enforced because it failed to satisfy the beneficiary principle.^[79] In the end an out-of-court settlement granted only £8600 for promoting the new alphabet, which is now called the Shavian alphabet. The National Gallery of Ireland, RADA and the British Museum all received substantial bequests.

Shaw's home, now called Shaw's Corner, in the small village of Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire is a National Trust property, open to the public.^[80] The Shaw Theatre, Euston Road, London, opened in 1971, was named in his honour.^[81] Near its entrance, opposite the new British Library, a contemporary statue of Saint Joan commemorates Shaw as author of that play.

The Shaw Festival, an annual theater festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada began as an eight week run of Don Juan in Hell (as the long third act dream sequence of Man And Superman is called when staged alone) and Candida in 1962, and has grown into an annual festival with over 800 performances a year, dedicated to producing the works of Shaw and his contemporaries.^[82]

He is also remembered as one of the pivotal founders of the London School of Economics, whose library is now called the British Library of Political and Economic Science. The Fabian Window designed by Shaw, hangs in the Shaw Library in the main building of the LSE.

Works

Novels

• Immaturity
• Cashel Byron's Profession
• An Unsocial Socialist
• The Irrational Knot
• Love Among the Artists

Short stories

• The Black Girl in Search of God (1932)
• The Miraculous Revenge

Drama

Essays

• Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891)
• The Perfect Wagnerite, Commentary on the Ring (1898)
• Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
• Preface to Major Barbara (1905)
• How to Write a Popular Play (1909)
• Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
• Common Sense about the War (1914)
• The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928)
• Dictators - Let Us Have More of Them (1938)
• "Shaw's Music: The Complete Musical Criticism Of Bernard Shaw in Three Volumes" (1955)
• "Shaw on Shakespeare: An Anthology of Bernard Shaw's Writings" (1961)

Debate

• Shaw v. Chesterton, a debate between George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton (2000) Third Way Publications Ltd. ISBN 0-9535077-7-7. E-text
• Do We Agree, a debate between G. B. Shaw and G. K. Chesterton with Hilaire Belloc as chairman (1928)

See also

• List of vegetarians

Notes

1. ^ Al Gore also won a Nobel Prize (but not for Literature), and starred in an Academy Award-winning documentary, but the latter was not awarded to him personally.
2. ^ Gibbs, A. M. (2005). Bernard Shaw: A Life (pp. 375–376). Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. pp. 554. ISBN 0-8130-2859-0. http://www.upf.com.
3. ^ George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. Letter, August 7, 1919, to Thomas Demetrius O'Bolger. Sixteen Self Sketches: Biographers' Blunders Corrected, pp. 89–90. Constable and Co., London (1949)
4. ^ Shaw, Bernard (1914). Misalliance, the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, and Fanny's First Play. With a Treatise on Parents and Children. London: Constable and Co.. pp. 210. http://www.online-literature.com/george_bernard_shaw/1101/.
5. ^ Holroyd, Michael (1988). Bernard Shaw Vol. I, pp. 49–51. New York: Random House. pp. 486. ISBN 0-394-52577-9.
6. ^ ^{a b} Mazer, Cary M.. "Bernard Shaw: a Brief Biography". University of Pennsylvania's English Department. http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cmazer/mis1.html. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
7. ^ Morrow, Laurie. "The Playwright in Spite of Himself". The World & I. http://www.worldandi.com/newhome/public/2003/may/bkpub.asp. Retrieved 2007-07-03.
8. ^ Minney, R. J. (1969). The Bogus Image of Bernard Shaw, p. 18. London: Leslie Frewin. pp. 223. ISBN 09096280 X.
9. ^ Pease, Edward R.; Paavo Cajander (trans.) (2004). The History of the Fabian Society. Project Gutenberg. ISBN 1847024335. http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/3/7/1/13715/13715.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-30.
10. ^ Laurence, Dan H. (1965). Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters, 1874–1897. London & Beccles: William Clowes & Sons, Ltd.. Introduction xi.
11. ^ "Bernard Shaw papers at LSE Archives". London School of Economics Library. http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/archive/gutoho/shaw_george_bernard.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-29.
12. ^ Holroyd, Michael (1991). Bernard Shaw. The Lure of Fantasy: 1918–1951. Random House, New York. pp. 509–511. ISBN 0-394-57554-7(v.3).
13. ^ Holyroyd, p. 515.
14. ^ Pharand, Michael (2004). "Chronology of (Shaw's) Works". International Shaw Society. http://www.shawsociety.org/Chronology-of-Works.htm. Retrieved 2007-08-15.
15. ^ "George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)". Unity Theatre. http://www.unitytheatre.org.uk/georgebernardshaw.htm. Retrieved 2007-08-16.
16. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1949). Sixteen Self Sketches: Nine Years of Failure as a Novelist Ending in Success as Critic. (pp. 39–41). London: Constable and Company, Ltd.. pp. 133.
17. ^ Cox, Gareth. "Shaw and the Don". Limerick Philosophical Society. http://www.ul.ie/~philos/vol2/shaw.html. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
18. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=kUM6EJao0KMC&pg=PP1&dq=Shaw+on+Shakespeare#v=onepage&q=&f=false
19. ^ ^{a b} Shaw, George Bernard (1909). The Perfect Wagnerite. New York: Brentano's. Brahms p. 143. ISBN 0140432612.
20. ^ Thuleen, Nancy. "Ein deutsches Requiem: Misconceptions of the Mass". Nancy Thuleen's Official Website. http://www.nthuleen.com/papers/415brahms.html. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
21. ^ Holroyd, Michael (1988). Bernard Shaw, Volume I (1856-1898). New York: Random House. pp. 230–246. ISBN 0-394-52577-9.
22. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1981). Laurence, Dan H.. ed. Shaw's Music. London: Bodley Head Ltd. ISBN 0370302494.
23. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1891). The Quintessence of Ibsenism. New York: Brentano's. ISBN 0140432612. http://books.google.com/?id=gJai_HMJpw0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Quintessence+of+Ibsenism.
24. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1886). Cashel Byron's Profession. London: The Modern Press.
25. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1887). An Unsocial Socialist. London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowry & Co..
26. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1900 & 1914). Love Among the Artists. Chicago & London: Herbert Stone & Co..
27. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1905). The Irrational Knot, Being the Second Novel of His Nonage (revised). New York: Brentano's.
28. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1931). Immaturity. London: Constable.
29. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1934). The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales. London: Constable. pp. 305.
30. ^ Shaw, Bernard (1963). Complete Plays and Prefaces, Volumes I–VI. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.
31. ^ Holroyd, Michael (1991). Bernard Shaw Vol. III The Lure of Fantasy (pp. 190–194). New York: Random House, Inc.. pp. 544. ISBN 0-394-57554-7.
32. ^ Minney, R. J. (1969). The Bogus Image of Bernard Shaw (pp. 66–7). London: Leslie Frewin Publishers, Ltd.. pp. 223. ISBN 0-0909-6280-X.
33. ^ Holroyd, Michael (1997). Bernard Shaw. The One-Volume Definitive Edition (p. 311). New York: Random House, Inc.. pp. 833. ISBN 0-0909-6280-X.
34. ^ Shaw, George Bernard; The Public Trustee (Executor of Shaw's Estate) (1962). Bernard Shaw: Complete Works with Prefaces, Volume I, p.452. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. pp. 804.
35. ^ Shaw, George Bernard; The Public Trustee (Executor of Shaw's Estate) (1962). Bernard Shaw: Complete Works with Prefaces, Volume I, Act I p. 757. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. pp. 804.
36. ^ ^{a b c d} Martin, Stanley (2007). "George Bernard Shaw". The Order of Merit: one hundred years of matchless honour. London: Taurus. p. 484. ISBN 9781860648489.
37. ^ Ervine, St. John (1949). Bernard Shaw: His Life, Work and Friends. London: Constable and Company Limited. pp. 383.
38. ^ Shaw, Bernard; Dan H. Laurence (editor) (1972). Collected Letters, 1898–1910. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. pp. 827–8.
39. ^ "George Bernard Shaw". Spartacus Educational. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jshaw.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
40. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (November 29, 1914). "Common Sense About the War" (PDF). The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=2&res=9402E3D71738E633A2575AC2A9679D946596D6CF&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
41. ^ Holroyd, Michael (1989). Bernard Shaw Vol. II The Pursuit of Power (p. 354). New York: Random House, Inc.. pp. 420. ISBN 0-394-57553-9.
42. ^ "Smallpox Resistance". U.S. National Library of Medicine. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/smallpox/sp_resistance.html. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
43. ^ Tucker, Jonathan B. (2002). Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox. Berkeley, California: Atlantic Monthly Press. p. 34. ISBN 0-87113-830-1.
44. ^ Henderson, Archibald (1956). George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc.. ISBN 0306714914.
45. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1949). Who I am, and What I think: Sixteen Self Sketches. Constable.
46. ^ Pearson, Hesketh (1963). Bernard Shaw: His Life and Personality. Atheneum Press. ISBN 0689701497.
47. ^ ^{a b} Shaw, George Bernard (1889). Fabian Essays in Socialism. New York: The Humboldt Publishing Co.. http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Shaw/shwFS.html. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
48. ^ ^{a b} Shaw, George Bernard (1928). Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Communism. New York: Bretano's Publishers.
49. ^ "Socialism and Liberty". Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/shaw/works/guide2.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
50. ^ Kilty, Jerome (1960). Dear liar; a comedy of letters adapted by Jerome Kilty from the correspondence of Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. pp. 95.
51. ^ St. John, Cristopher (1931). Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons: Knickerbocker Press. pp. 334.
52. ^ Green, Benny (1978). Shaw’s champions : G. B. S. & prizefighting from Cashel Byron to Gene Tunney. London: Elm Tree Books. pp. 210. ISBN 0241897351.
53. ^ Smith (Editor), J. Percy (1995). Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 242. ISBN 0802030017.
54. ^ "Mr. Shaw regrets". Boston College Magazine. http://bcm.bc.edu/issues/winter_2005/ft_shaw.html. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
55. ^ The e-text of their famed debate, Shaw V. Chesterton is available, as is a book, Shaw V. Chesterton, a debate between George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton.
56. ^ Dukore (Editor), Bernard F. (September 1996). Bernard Shaw and Gabriel Pascal: Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw, Vol. 3. University of Toronto Press. pp. 224. ISBN 0802030025.
57. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1930). An UnsocialSocialist. New York: Wm. H. Wise & Company. pp. 269.
58. ^ Shaw, George Bernard; Lewis Casson (Intro.) (1969). Man and Superman. New York: Heritage Press.
59. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (2007). Back to Methuselah—a Metabiological Penateuch. Hicks press. pp. 388. ISBN 1408631040.
60. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1949). Sixteen Self Sketches: How I Became a Public Speaker, p. 58. London: Constable and Company, Ltd.. pp. 133.
61. ^ Shaw, GB. "Letter from GB Shaw". Stephen-Stratford. http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/gb_shaw_letter.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-26.
62. ^ Tim Tzouliadis: The Forsaken, p.10; London, 2009
63. ^ ibid, p. 12^{[verification needed]}
64. ^ Edvīns Šnore (Director, Writer); Kristaps Valdnieks (Producer). (May 5, 2008) (Motion Picture). (Clip) The Soviet Story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQvsf2MUKRQ (Clip).
65. ^ ^{a b c d} Shaw, George Bernard (1934). ""On The Rocks"". http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/On_the_Rocks/Preface/2#INADEQUACY_OF_PENAL_CODES
66. ^ "Letters to the Editor: Social Conditions in Russia by George Bernard Shaw, published in The Manchester Guardian, 2 March 1933". Gareth Jones' Memorial Website. http://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/bernard_shaw.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
67. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (January 1949). "The Lysenko Muddle". Labour Monthly. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/shaw/works/lysenko.htm
68. ^ Gray, Paul (January 11). "Cursed by eugenics". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,17697,00.html
69. ^ Cricton, Michael (2004). "Why Politicized Science is Dangerous". http://www.crichton-official.com/essay-stateoffear-whypoliticizedscienceisdangerous.html.
70. ^ "George Bernard Shaw in Soviet Union". 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93eir00rOho&feature.
71. ^ Shaw, George (2008). Man and Superman. pp. 192. ISBN 1434477800. http://www.wildsidebooks.com/Man-and-Superman-by-George-Bernard-Shaw-40trade-pb41_p_3825.html
72. ^ Searle, Geoffrey Russell (1976). Eugenics and politics in Britain, 1900-1914. Groningen, Netherlands: Noordhoff International. p. 58. ISBN 9789028602366.
73. ^ Stone, Dan (2002). "The Lethal Chamber in Eugenic Thought". Breeding superman: Nietzsche, race and eugenics in Edwardian and interwar Britain. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press. p. 127. ISBN 9780853239970. "Either the press believed Shaw to be serious, and vilified him, or recognised the tongue-in-cheek nature of his lecture … only The Globe and the Evening News also recognised it as a skit on the dreams of the eugenicists."
74. ^ Searle (1976: 92): "This was widely felt to be a joke in the worst possible taste".
75. ^ "George Bernard Shaw & The Humane Gas". 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgpaKkrZex4&feature.
76. ^ "Religion: Creative Revolutionary". Time. 1950-12-04. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,813999,00.html. Retrieved 2010-05-03.
77. ^ Holroyd, Michael (1998). Bernard Shaw: A Biography. Vintage.
78. ^ Holroyd, Michael (1997). Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition, Appendix (p.794). New York: Random House, Inc.. pp. 833. ISBN 0-375-50049-9.
79. ^ Mowbray Q.C., John. "Chapter 03: Trusts Created Expressly". Todd & Watt's Cases and Materials on Equity and Trusts. Oxford University Press. http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199279821/resources/weblinks/ch03/. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
80. ^ The National Trust. "Shaw's Corner". http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-shawscorner.htm. Retrieved 2006-04-09 .
81. ^ Off Westend Theatres, London. "Shaw's Theatre". http://www.offwestendtheatres.co.uk/?where=the_shaw. Retrieved 2006-04-09 .
82. ^ Holmes (editor), Katherine (1986). Celebrating Twenty-Five Years on the Stage at the Shaw Festival. Erin Canada: Boston Mills Press. pp. 64. ISBN 0-919783-48-1.

References

• Barzun, Jacques. “A Jacques Barzun Reader: Selections from his works”. Harper Collins, 2002
• Brown, G.E. “George Bernard Shaw”. Evans Brothers Ltd, 1970
• Chappelow, Alan. "Shaw the Villager and Human Being — a Biographical symposium", with a preface by Dame Sybil Thorndike, (1962). "Shaw — the 'Chucker-Out", 1969. ISBN 0-4040-8359-5
• Evans, T.F. “Shaw: The Critical heritage”. The Critical Heritage series. Routlege & Kegan Paul, 1976
• Gibbs, A.M (Ed.). “Shaw: Interviews and Recollections”.
• Gibbs, A.M. "Bernard Shaw, A Life". University of Florida Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8130-2859-0
• Henderson, Archibald. “Bernard Shaw: Playboy and Prophet”. D. Appleton & Co., 1932
• Holroyd, Michael (Etd). “The Genius of Shaw: A symposium”, Hodder & Stoughton, 1979
• Holroyd, Michael. "Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition", Random House, 1998. ISBN 978-0393327182
• Hubenka, Lloyd J. (Editor). “Bernard Shaw: Practical Politics: Twentieth-century views on politics and economics”. University of Nebraska Press, 1976
• Minney, R.J. “The Bogus Image of Bernard Shaw”. London, Frewin, 1969. ISBN 0-0909-6280-X
• Ohmann, Richard M. "Shaw: The Style and the Man". Wesleyan University Press, 1962. ASIN: B000OKX9H2
• Owen, Harold. “Common sense about the Shaw”. George Allen and Unwin, 1915
• Peters, Sally. “Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman”. Yale University Press, 1996 ISBN 978-0300060973
• Rider, Dan. “Adventures with Bernard Shaw”. Morley and Mitchell Kennerley Junior.
• Smith, J. Percy. “Unrepentant Pilgrim: A study of the development of Bernard Shaw”. Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1965
• Strauss, E. “Bernard Shaw: Art and Socialism”. Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1942
• Weintraub, Stanley. “Bernard Shaw 1914–1918: Journey to Heartbreak”. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973
• Weintraub, Stanley. “The Unexpected Shaw: Biographical approaches to G.B.S and his work”. Frederick Ungar Publishing Co, 1982 ISBN 080442974X
• West, Alick. “A good man fallen among Fabians: A study of George Bernard Shaw” Lawrence and Wishart, 1974 ISBN 9780853152880
• Watson, Barbara Bellow: “A Shavian Guide to the intelligent women”. Chatto and Windus, 1964
• Wilson, Colin. "Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment". Athenum, 1969.
• Winsten, Stephen. “Jesting Apostle: The Life of Bernard Shaw”. Hutchinson and Co Ltd, 1956
• Winsten, Stephen. “Salt and his circle: With a preface by Bernard Shaw”. Hutchinson and Co Ltd, 1951

External links

• George Bernard Shaw at the Internet Movie Database
• George Bernard Shaw at IBDb.com
• George Bernard Shaw 1937 color portrait by Madame Yevonde
• Works of George Bernard Shaw at HolyeBooks.org
• Works by or about George Bernard Shaw in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Bernard Shaw papers at LSE Archives
• George Bernard Shaw photographs featured as part of the Man and Cameraman project at LSE Archives
• George Bernard Shaw at the Internet Movie Database
• International Shaw Society, includes a chronology of Shaw's works
• The Shaw Society, UK, established in 1941
• The Bernard Shaw Society, New York
• Shaw Chicago Theater A theater dedicated to the works of Shaw & his contemporaries.
• Shaw Festival Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada theatre that specializes in plays by Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries and plays about his era (1856–1950)
• The Nobel Prize Biography on Shaw, From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901–1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, (1969).
• Dan H. Laurence/Shaw Collection in the University of Guelph Library, Archival and Special Collections, holds more than 3,000 items related to his writings and career
• Michael Holroyd (July 19, 2006). "Send for Shaw, not Shakespeare". London: The Times Literary Supplement. http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25338-2277082,00.html.
• Sunder Katwala (July 26, 2006). "Artist of the impossible". London: Guardian Comment. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jul/26/gbsat150.
• George Bernard Shaw Timeline
• George Bernard Shaw's collection at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin

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See Also:

• George Bernard Shaw: Quotes
• Georgist: Encyclopedia
• David Lloyd George: Encyclopedia

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