George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright. Born in Dublin,
he moved to London at the age of twenty and lived in England for the remainder of his life.

Although Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama,
and during his career he authored more than sixty plays. Nearly all of his writings deal sternly
with prevailing social problems, but are leavened by a vein of comedy to make their stark themes
more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and
class privilege and found them all defective, but his ire was most aroused by the exploitation of
the working class; his writings seldom fail to censure that abuse.

An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He
became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal
political rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private
ownership of productive land, and promoting healthful lifestyles.

Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They made their
home in Ayot St. Lawrence in a house now called Shaw's Corner. 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 the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an
Oscar (1938). These were for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film
Pygmalion, respectively. Shaw would have refused his Nobel Prize outright, because he'd 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.

Biography

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 to George Carr Shaw (1814–1885), 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 (1854–1876). George briefly
attended the Wesleyan Connexional School, a grammar school operated by the Methodist New
Connexion, before moving to a private school near Dalkey 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've 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."

When his mother left home and followed her voice teacher, George Vandeleur Lee, to London,
Shaw was almost sixteen years old. His sisters accompanied their mother 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. 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.

Influenced by his reading, he became a dedicated Socialist and a charter member of the
Fabian Society, a middle class organization established in 1884 to promote the gradual spread
of socialism by peaceful means. In the course of his political activities he met Charlotte Payne-
Townshend, an Irish heiress and fellow Fabian; they married in 1898. In 1906 the Shaws moved
into a house, now called Shaw's Corner, in Ayot St Lawrence, a small village in Hertfordshire; 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.
Along with Fabian Society members Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb and Graham Wallas,
Shaw founded the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1895 with funding
provided by private philanthropy, including a bequest of £20,000 from Henry Hunt Hutchinson to
the Fabian Society. One of the libraries at the LSE is named in Shaw's honour; it contains
collections of his papers and photographs.
During his final years Shaw enjoyed attending to the grounds at Shaw's Corner. His death, at 94,
from renal failure, was precipitated by injuries incurred by falling while pruning a tree. His ashes,
mixed with those of his wife, were scattered along footpaths and around the statue of Saint Joan
in their garden.

Literary works  :  The International Shaw Society provides a detailed chronological listing of
Shaw's writings. See also George Bernard Shaw, Unity Theatre.

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), 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 prize-fighter. 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 who advocated such
reforms.

Written in 1883, An Unsocial Socialist was published in 1887. The tale begins with a hilarious
description of student antics at a girl's school then changes focus to a seemingly uncouth
labourer 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's 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, 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.

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's 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. 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 behaviour is the prime message in the book, and derives from Shaw's familial
memories. This is made clear in the book’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. 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, 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 searching in favour 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 so different from Shaw's ordinary style that it's hard to believe he wrote it.

Plays  :  Shaw began working on his first play destined for production, Widowers' Houses, in 1885
in collaboration with critic William Archer, who supplied the structure. Archer decided that Shaw
couldn't write a play, so the project was abandoned. Years later, Shaw tried again and, in 1892,
completed the play without collaboration. Widower's 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'd found his medium. His first significant financial success as a playwright
came from Richard Mansfield's American production of The Devil's Disciple (1897). He went on
to write 63 plays, most of them full-length.


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 (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."

In 1921, Shaw completed Back to Methuselah, 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 conviction that a "Life Force" purposefully directs evolution toward ultimate perfection.
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 conceded to be one of his better works.
Shaw had long considered writing about Joan of Arc, and her canonization supplied a strong
incentive. The play was an international success, and is believed to have led to his Nobel Prize
in Literature. 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, 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.

Friends and correspondents:  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, 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, to the boxer Gene
Tunney, and to H.G. Wells, have also been published. Eventually the volume of his
correspondence became insupportable, as can be inferred from apologetic letters written by
assistants. 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.

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. A stage play based on a book by Hugh Whitmore, 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.
Socialism and political beliefs

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) to fund the creation of a new phonemic alphabet for the English
language. 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, once My Fair Lady—a musical adapted from the play 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. 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. The Shaw Theatre, Euston Road, London,
opened in 1971, was named in his honour. 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 theatre festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, 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.

He is also remembered as one of the pivotal founders of the London School of Economics,
which 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
•        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
•  Plays Unpleasant (published 1898)
•        Widowers' Houses (1892)
•        The Philanderer (1898)
•        Mrs Warren's Profession (1893)
•  Plays Pleasant (published 1898):
•        Arms and the Man (1894)
•        Candida (1894)
•        The Man of Destiny (1895)
•        You Never Can Tell (1897)
•  Three Plays for Puritans (published 1901)
•        The Devil's Disciple (1897)
•        Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)
•        Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1899)
•  The Admirable Bashville (1901)
•  Man and Superman (1902-03)
•  John Bull's Other Island (1904)
•  How He Lied to Her Husband (1904)
•  Major Barbara (1905)
•  The Doctor's Dilemma (1906)
•  Getting Married (1908)
•  The Glimpse of Reality (1909)
•  The Fascinating Foundling (1909)
•  Press Cuttings (1909)
•  Misalliance (1910)
•  Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress (1917)
•  Dark Lady of the Sonnets (1910)
•  Fanny's First Play (1911)
•  Overruled (1912)
•  Androcles and the Lion (1912)
•  Pygmalion (1912-13)
•  The Great Catherine (1913)
•  The Inca of Perusalem (1915)
•  O'Flaherty VC (1915)
•  Augustus Does His Bit (1916)
•  Heartbreak House (1919)
•  Back to Methuselah (1921)
•        In the Beginning
•        The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
•        The Thing Happens
•        Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman
•        As Far as Thought Can Reach
•  Saint Joan (1923)
•  The Apple Cart (1929)
•  Too True To Be Good (1931)
•  On the Rocks (1933)
•  The Six of Calais (1934)
•  The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (1934)
•  The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet (1909)
•  The Millionairess (1936)
•  Geneva (1938)
•  In Good King Charles' Golden Days (1939)
•  Buoyant Billions (1947)
•  Shakes versus Shav (1949)
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)
Debate
•  Shaw V. Chesterton, a debate between George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton (2000)
Third Way Publications Ltd. ISBN 0-9535077-7-7
•  Do We Agree, a debate between G, B. Shaw and G. K. Chesterton with H. Belloc as chairman
(1928)
SOURCE:  http://george_bernard_shaw.totallyexplained.com/

George Bernard Shaw Totally Explained
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