George Bernard Shaw

-
Standard Name: Shaw, George Bernard
Used Form: G. B. Shaw
GBS was a drama critic who called for reform of theatrical practice, and a dramatist who attached to his plays on publication, lengthy prefaces expounding the social and dramatic issues opened by the play itself. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him a polemicist, and says that much of the drama of his time and after was indirectly in his debt for his creation of a drama of moral passion and of intellectual conflict and debate.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Characters Florence Farr
The Dancing Faun combines elements of melodrama, social realism, and comedy of manners.Grace Travers falls victim to her husband George's schemes to make a fortune by regaining entry into high society through deception and blackmail...
Cultural formation Florence Farr
FF grew up in a well-to-do, professional, English family that gave her access to a good education and exposed her to ideas of social reform. Bernard Shaw later commented that her privileged upbringing dulled her...
Cultural formation Amber Reeves
Born a New Zealander, she clearly regarded herself later in life as English. Her parents were highly educated professionals. Her mother was a suffragist, and both parents became members of the Fabian Society (founded three...
Cultural formation Annie Besant
In the course of her life, AB explored many facets of religion and politics. Early in her life she entertained a passionate Christian devotion and was inspired by the idea of sacrifice, even martyrdom. She...
death Beatrice Webb
Her body was cremated and buried at Passfield Corner, until at Bernard Shaw 's somewhat incongruous suggestion, the ashes of both Webbs were re-buried together in Politicians' Corner, Westminster Abbey, on 12 December 1947...
Education H. D.
Following her withdrawal from Bryn Mawr, HD (with Pound 's assistance) embarked on an intensive independent study programme that lasted for five years. During this period she read and studied writers such as William Morris
Education Muriel Box
MB early learned to read for herself (with some help from Reading Without Tears, a mid-Victorian textbook by Favell Lee Bevan, later Mrs Mortimer ) because her parents were often too busy to satisfy...
Education Olivia Manning
At home Olivia was encouraged to love poetry, learned to read by the time she was four, and was later subjected to piano lessons which taught her nothing. As a teenager and thinking of herself...
Education Emma Frances Brooke
The school, which was founded this year by Beatrice and Sidney Webb , Graham Wallas , and George Bernard Shaw , focused on the study of inequalities and poverty issues with the aim of improving...
Education Viola Tree
In 1911 Bernard Shaw , who was an opera critic as well as a playwright, and a Tree family friend (his donations were crucial to the success of Royal Academy of Dramatic Art ), wrote...
Education Meiling Jin
She was saved by the public Children's Library. She read omnivorously, beginning with the Dr Doolittle books (Hugh Lofting ) and fairy stories but missing out on Enid Blyton (who was kept locked away)...
Education Margaret Drabble
MD attended Mount School, York, a Quaker boarding school where her mother had taught English.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge, 1989.
192
While there she acted the role of Bernard Shaw 's St Joan in a production by the Mount's brother school.
Hattersley, Roy. “The Darling of Hampstead”. The Guardian, pp. 6-7.
6
Family and Intimate relationships Frances Sarah Hoey
Her mother, born Charlotte Jane Shaw , was half-sister to George Bernard Shaw 's mother.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Family and Intimate relationships Muriel Box
MB 's mother was christened Caroline Beatrice (Doney) but known as Bertie.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Box, Muriel. Odd Woman Out. Leslie Frewin, 1974.
14, 16
She was a woman of passion, of deep-rooted prejudices, capable of violent outbursts of temper when her will was crossed. She...
Family and Intimate relationships Florence Farr
With the encouragement of Bernard Shaw , FF filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery and desertion several years after having separated from her husband .
Johnson, Josephine. Florence Farr: Bernard Shaw’s new woman. Colin Smythe, 1975.
23-4

Timeline

1878
William Swan Sonnenschein and J. Archibald Allen formed a partnership in the publishing firm of Swan Sonnenschein and Allen , at 15 Paternoster Square, London.
1883
L. R. S. Tomalin , an early disciple of Gustave Jaeger 's woollen movement, set up the Jaeger Company in Fore Street, London, to sell Dr Jaeger's Sanitary Woollen Clothing..
January 1884
The Fabian Society was founded in London to publicize socialist ideas and investigate the application of socialist principles to British conditions.
Christmas 1889
The Fabian Essays appeared, edited by George Bernard Shaw .
early June 1890
Philippa Fawcett of Newnham College, Cambridge , was placed above the Senior Wrangler in the university's mathematics results.
February 1891
Theatre producer and critic J. T. Grein founded the Independent Theatre Society in London to promote literary rather than commercial plays, and the new drama in particular.
April 1892
Physical confrontation broke out at a meeting in St James's Hall, London, of supporters of women's franchise.
By April 1894
English theatre patron Annie Horniman funded a repertory season at the Avenue Theatre (later the Avenue Playhouse), London which concentrated on the new drama.
1897
With her publication of Grains of Sense, philosopher Victoria, Lady Welby , shifted from theology towards a more academic and analytic study of meaning.
31 May 1898
George Bedborough , secretary of the Legitimation League which sought to change the law to improve the position of illegitimate children, was arrested, largely in an attempt to damage the League through him.
1904
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (father of the writers Viola and Iris Tree ) founded an Academy of Dramatic Art at His Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket, London.
Autumn 1904 to summer 1907
Under the management of playwright and director Harley Granville-Barker and business manager J. E. Vedrenne , the Court Theatre became the first permanent home of the new drama.
1906
At the Annual General Meeting of the Society of Authors , George Bernard Shaw deplored the dragging down of literary earnings by groups possessing a non-literary income, particularly married women.
1906
Tolstoy on Shakespeare, which included a translation of Tolstoy by Isabella Fyvie Mayo as I. F. M., and Vladimir Grigorevich Chertkov as V. Tchertkoff (as well as an essay by George Bernard Shaw ), was published.
1907
Alfred Richard Orage and Holbrook Jackson acquired the weekly reviewNew Age (founded in 1894).
Kindley, Evan. “Ismism”. London Review of Books, Vol.
36
, No. 2, pp. 33-5.
34
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Orage
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

Texts

Shaw, George Bernard. “An Explanatory Word from Mr. Shaw”. Florence Farr, Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats: Letters, edited by Clifford Bax, Home and Van Thal, 1946, p. vii - x.
Shaw, George Bernard. Arms and the Man. G. Richards, 1894.
Shaw, George Bernard. Back to Methuselah. Brentano’s, 1921.
Shaw, George Bernard. Buoyant Billions: Farfetched Fables, and Shakes versus Shav. Constable and Company, 1950.
Shaw, George Bernard. Common Sense about the War. Statesman Pub. Co., 1914.
Shaw, George Bernard. Fanny’s First Play. Constable, 1910.
Shaw, George Bernard. Heartbreak House, Great Catherine, and Playlets of the War. Constable, 1919.
Shaw, George Bernard. In Good King Charles’s Golden Days: A History Lesson. Constable & Co., 1939.
Shaw, George Bernard. John Bull’s Other Island and Major Barbara: also How He Lied to Her Husband. The Times Book Club, 1907.
Shaw, George Bernard. Man and Superman; a Comedy, and a Philosophy. A. Constable, 1903.
Shaw, George Bernard. “Note on Lady Gregory’s Plays”. Lady Gregory, Fifty Years After, edited by Dan H. Laurence, Ann Saddlemyer, and Colin Smythe, Colin Smythe, 1987, pp. 274-6.
Shaw, George Bernard. Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant. G. Richards, 1898.
Shaw, George Bernard. Press Cuttings. Constable & Co., 1909.
Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion. Constable & Co., 1914.
Shaw, George Bernard. Saint Joan. Constable, 1923.
Shaw, George Bernard. The Apple Cart. Constable & Co., 1930.
Shaw, George Bernard. The Doctor’s Dilemma, Getting Married, and The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet. Constable and Company, 1911.
Shaw, George Bernard. The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. Constable & Co., 1928.
Shaw, George Bernard. The Quintessence of Ibsenism. Walter Scott, 1891.
Shaw, George Bernard. The Quintessence of Ibsenism. Hill and Wang, 1937.
Shaw, George Bernard. Three Plays for Puritans: The Devil’s Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra, & Captain Brassbound’s Conversion. G. Richards, 1901.
Shaw, George Bernard. Too True to be Good: Village Wooing, and On the Rocks. Constable and Company, Limited., 1934.
Shaw, George Bernard. What I Really Wrote about the War. Constable & Co., 1931.