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/.
Annie Horniman
, whom FF
met through the Order of the Golden Dawn
, agreed to back the season financially. Farr succeeded in persuading Yeats
to write a one-act play for her season, and enlisted...
Occupation
Florence Farr
The lecture proved quite popular, and Clifford's Inn had to turn people away. Over the following years, FF
put on many such readings, performing works by Homer
, Shelley
, Yeats
, Lady Gregory
...
Material Conditions of Writing
Florence Farr
The manuscript was rejected by Unwin
and Heinemann
before her friend John Lane
accepted it for somewhat questionable reasons: It is always very pleasant to accept the MS of a new riter [sic] but it...
Intertextuality and Influence
Bernardine Evaristo
BE
substitutes another name for the surname she shares with her father, but gives her mother's birth name as in life. Her narrator is not Bernardine but Lara, short for Owolara, which means the family...
Family and Intimate relationships
George Egerton
Bright first had a column in the Evening Sun, and later wrote for the Daily Express and the Pall Mall Gazette. He was sub-editor at the Evening Sun and night-editor at the Daily...
Textual Production
George Egerton
GE
tried her hand at drama after marrying the drama critic Reginald Golding Bright
. Her three plays, all dominated by female characters, were all performed without marked success. In 1905 she sent a play...
Textual Production
George Egerton
In 1907 GE
wrote a comedy entitled His Wife's Family, about an Irishwoman's allegiance to her own relations as opposed to those of her husband.
Egerton, George. A Leaf from the Yellow Book. Editor White, Terence de Vere, Richards Press.
65, 68
She sent this play too to Shaw
Literary responses
George Egerton
Both lauded and lambasted, GE
was a sexually radical writer who challenged English reserve and literary reticence through the directness of her treatment of female desire.
Ledger, Sally. The New Woman. Manchester University Press.
188
But after all her popularity and notoriety at...
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.
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
Textual Production
E. M. Delafield
Lady Rhondda
, the editor of Time and Tide, had approached EMD
earlier in 1929 about writing a light serial for the journal. EMD
then attended a lunch with Lady Rhondda, at which George Bernard Shaw
Performance of text
Teresa Deevy
TD
had her great success with the play Katie Roche, which after its debut at the Abbey Theatre
, Dublin, was in 1938 seen both at the Abbey's festival (alongside work by O'Casey
Intertextuality and Influence
Teresa Deevy
TD
began writing as a child, producing stories about family doings for her mother and sisters. During her last years at school, from 1911, the school magazine, St Ursula's Annual, featured her stories. Living...
Friends, Associates
Edith Craig
This made them close neighbours of George Bernard
and Charlotte Shaw
. Story has it that Craig got a role in Shaw's Getting Married after he heard her calling up to St John to throw...
Occupation
Edith Craig
After the Pioneer Players folded, EC
became actively involved in the Little Theatre movement which was rapidly growing outside London.
