George Bernard Shaw
George
Bernard Shaw
(26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was
a world-famous playwright. Born in
Dublin, he moved to London at the
age of twenty and lived in England
for the remainder of his life.
Shaw’s
first profitable writing was music
and literary criticism, but he was
drawn to drama and he authoured more
than sixty plays during his career.
His plays, nearly all of which which
deal seriously with prevailing
social problems, are nicely leavened
by a delightful vein of comedy to
make the messages more palatable. He
pondered education, marriage,
religion, government, health care,
and class privilege and found them
all defective, but he was truly
outraged by the heartless
exploitation of the working class
that pervaded the Victorian era and
remediating that abuse was his
primary goal.
An ardent
socialist,
Shaw wrote many brochures and
speeches for the
Fabian Society
and 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 from
a ladder. He is the only person to
have been awarded both the
Nobel Prize
for Literature
(1925) and an
Oscar (1938).
These, repectively, were for his
contributions to literature, and for
his work on the film
Pygmalion.
Androcles and
the Lion
- 198 KB
Preface to
Androcles and the Lion
- 359 KB
Caesar and
Cleopatra
- 424 KB
Augustus Does
His Bit
- 180 KB
Annajanska,
the Bolshevik Empress
- 223 KB
Arms and the
Man
- 248 KB
Preface to
Major Barbara
- 170 KB
Major Barbara
- 448 KB
The Man of
Destiny
- 278 KB
Cashel Byron’s
Profession
- 601 KB
The Doctor’s
Dilemma: Preface on Doctors
- 256 KB
Man & Superman
- 647 KB
Captain
Brassbound’s Conversion
- 443 KB
Candida
- 273KB
The Doctor’s
Dilemma
- 398 KB
Dark Lady of
the Sonnets
- 201 KB
Fanny’s First
Play
- 284 KB
Getting
Married
- 485 KB
The Inca of
Perusalem
- 139 KB
Great
Catherine
- 187 KB
Heartbreak
House
- 443 KB
John Bull’s
Other Island
- 361 KB
Misalliance
- 320 KB
You Never Can
Tell
- 375 KB
O’Flaherty
V.C.
- 134 KB
Overruled
- 175 KB
How He Lied to
Her Husband
- 143 KB
Press Cuttings
- 170 KB
Pygmalion
- 376 KB
The Shewing-up
of Blanco Posnet
- 366 KB
The Perfect
Wagnerite
- 412 KB
The Devil’s
Disciple
- 306 KB
The
Philanderer
- 316 KB
A Treatise on
Parents and Children
- 323 KB
Mrs. Warren’s
Profession
- 499 KB
An Unsocial
Socialist