Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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 et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
She became a close friend of Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson
, of Hertha Ayrton
, physicist and suffragist, and of Ayrton's daughter, Barbara Gould
. These two women, mother and daughter, embodied a thread linking...
politics
Ethel Sidgwick
The Congress, held from 28 April to 1 May, attracted 1,200 women from twelve countries, both warring and neutral, to discuss means of achieving peace. Others meeting with the delegates on the subsequent peace tour...
Travel
Constance Smedley
Not all her prewar travelling was Lyceum-related. She was in Germany again a few years later, as an agent for Delineator, an American magazine, having left at short notice to track down Elizabeth von Arnim
Occupation
Constance Smedley
In her capacity as European representative for the American Everybody's Magazine (edited by John O'Hara Cosgrave
), CS
set out to woo various authors including Kenneth Grahame
. She writes that she was successful in...
Friends, Associates
Edith Somerville
ES
first heard of George Bernard Shaw
not as a writer but when he married one of her cousins. Her first reaction was one of prejudice: against his lower-middle-class background, his socialism, and his revulsive...
Textual Production
Edith Somerville
As civil war loomed in Ireland and need for money pressed, ES
made two efforts to convert the R. M. stories into a play. She first asked for help from Maurice Hastings
, a friend...
Literary responses
Edith Somerville
He
, however, comprehensively condemned it.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
208
Another attempt to sell the manuscript, in 1935, was also a failure.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
255-6
Literary responses
Christopher St John
St John said that after she published her novels George Bernard Shaw
(a great friend and supporter of her, Craig, and Tony Atwood
) suggested that she should write a history of her own unconventional...
Textual Production
Christopher St John
After Terry's death in 1928, St John engaged in literary as well as theatrical memorial work of various kinds. She edited Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw
: a Correspondence, 1931, edited and provided an...
Textual Production
Freya Stark
In Such Good Friends and Friends of a Lifetime, Sir Sydney Cockerell
published a selection of letters from his (mostly famous) associates; according to critics, among the best were those written by G. B. Shaw
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
G. B. Stern
Her early novels combine a strain of intellectualism (characters discuss Shaw
and Nietzsche
) with a self-conscious modernity (attention to issues and to sophistication of tone). She was held to belong to the stream of...
Textual Production
Marie Stopes
Other later poems include Wartime Harvest, 1944 (which brought together a preface by Lord Alfred Douglas
and a letter from George Bernard Shaw
), and Instead of Tears: In Memoriam for Officers and Men...
Literary responses
Josephine Tey
The play garnered high praise from contemporary theatre critics, and was immensely popular with audiences, some of whom reputedly went to see it thirty or forty times.
Gielgud, Sir John. Early Stages. Falcon.
178
It brought its author fame and recognition...
Friends, Associates
Flora Thompson
Grayshott offered more extensive opportunities. As well as offering the usual library and penny readings, it was a centre for literary celebrities. During her work in the post-office FT
observed and caught snatches of the...
Family and Intimate relationships
Iris Tree
Writer, critic, and caricaturist Sir Max Beerbohm
was IT
's half-uncle, the youngest son from Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's father's second marriage. Best remembered for his drawings and caricatures of the famous, Beerbohm also wrote...
