1856-1950 [vars. Bernard Shaw; G. B. Shaw; fam. known as ‘Sonny’];
b. Coombe Hospital. 26 July, son of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth
Gurly (‘Bessie’, m. 1852 (aetat. 22) of 3 Upr. Synge St., Dublin
[now 33 Synge St.], the former owning an ailing flour mill at Dolphin’s
Barn and the latter (wrongly assumed by him to possess the money to save
it); GBS ed. by Rev. Carroll, rector of St. Bride’s, an uncle by
marriage; later at the Wesley Connexional [now Wesley College], Dublin;
Mrs. Shaw goes to George John Vandaleur Lee for voice-training; the Shaws
move to 1, Hatch St., the house of Lee’s recently dead br. with whom
he had shared it; Lee buys of house for Mrs Shaw on Dalkey Hill; Mrs.
Shaw follows Lee to London, allegedly earning only £6 by writing in his
first 9 years; Shaws move to 61 Harcourt St., 1871; a sis. Agnes goes
to the Isle of Wight for TB cure and dies there; another, Lucy, moves
to Fulham Rd. to live with her mother; Bernard Shaw leaves school and
commences working for Charles Uniake Townsend, estate-agents, of Molesworth
St.; published letter in Public Opinion, signed "S",
commentin on the influence of the evangelists Moody and Sankey during
their Dublin tour, 1875 [‘... Respecting the effect of the revival
on individuals I may mention that it has a tendency to make them highly
objectionable ... it remains doubtful if the change is not merely in the
nature of the excitement rather than in the moral nature of the individual
...’]; moves to London, April 1876; joins Zetetical Society; publishes
Immaturity (1879), a novel; also Love Among the Artists (1881),
Cashel Byron's Profession (1882-83) and An Unsocial Socialist
(1883) joins the Webbs' Fabian Society at its foundation, in 1884,
reporting that reading Marx ‘made a man of me’; contribs. book-reviews
to Pall Mall Gazette (ed. William Archer), 1885-88; his
play Widowers’ Houses suggested by Archer as a means of promoting
Ibsenism, 1885; reworked for J. T. Grein’s Independent Theatre Co.
and produced at Royal Theatre, 9 Dec. 1892; acts as art critic, The
World, 1886-89; acts as music critic to Star, under pseud.
‘Corno di Bassetto’, 1888-90; ditto to World, 1890-95;
issues The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891); his play Arms and
the Man, performed Avenue Theatre, London, 21 April 1894, with subvention
from Annie Horniman, with Yeats’s The Land of Heart’s
Desire acting as a curtain-raiser; later transferred to the Court
Theatre, and produced there by Vedrenne and Barker; enjoys success with
Arms and the Man (April 1894), transferring to New York (Sept.
1894); becomes dram. critic on Saturday Review (ed. Frank
Harris), 1895-98; stayed at Beachy Head with Fabians, and passed time
‘diligently trying to ride bicycle for the first time in my life’,
Easter 1895; worked for St Pancras Local Govt councillor as 'vestryman',
1897-1903; corresponded with Ellen Terry for whom he wrote Mrs Brassbound’s
Conversion; m. Charlotte Payne-Townsend (d.1943), 1898, and moved
with her to Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, where he remained thereafter;
issues Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, 2 Vols. (1898), containing
Arms and the Man, The Man of Destiny, Candida, Mrs.
Warren's Profession, The Philanderer, &c.; refused invitation
to participate in centenary commemoration of the 1798 Rebellion [‘Until
Irishmen apply themselves to what the condition of Ireland will be in
1998, they will get very little patriotism out of Yours sincerely’];
hears Elgar’s Enigma Variations [‘… took your breath.
Whew! I knew we had got it at last’], and established friendship
with the composer; Mary Chavelita Bright (1859-1945) became his drama
agent, 1901; issues Three Plays for Puritans (1901), being Caesar
and Cleopatra; Captain Brassbound's Conversion and The Devil's
Disciple; writes Man and Superman, 1901-03, premiered at the
Royal Court Theatre (23 May, 1905); further plays produced at the Royal
Court by Harley Granville-Barker, actor-director, under John Vedrenne
and Barker’s brilliant partnership there, 1904-07, including John
Bull's Other Island, commissioned by W. B. Yeats for the Abbey [‘Mr.
Yeats got more than he bargained for’] and premiered at the Royal
Court (1 Nov. 1904), Major Barbara (28 Nov. 1905) and The Doctor's
Dilemma (20 Nov. 1906); Shaw visits Coole Park, summer 1910; John
Bull’s Other Island viewed four times by Arthur Balfour with
cabinet colleagues but rejected by the Abbey for want of an actor to play
Broadbent, though revived in Dublin (Sept. 1916); regarded by Shaw as
an ‘uncompromising presentment of the real old Ireland’; the
leasing of Savoy Theatre, 1907-08 and the production of Shavian revivals
resulted in financial loss and the termination of the partnership with
Granville-Barker; GBS’s play The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet produced
in Dublin, at the end of Horse Show Week, 25 Aug. 1909 , and reviewed
by Joyce; death of GBS’s mother, 1913; first production of Pygmalion
at Lessing Theatre, Berlin, Nov. 1913, and first played in London,
April 1914; Androcles and the Lion (Berlin 25 Nov. 1912; St James,
1 Sept. 1913); GBS falls in love with Mrs. Campbell, who played Eliza
Doolittle in Pygmalion; declared public enemy and pro-Kaiser in
England; six plays staged at the Abbey, 25 Sept. 1916–26 May 1917,
dir. J. Augustus Keogh; GBS protested against execution of 1916 leaders
[‘an Irishman resorting to arms to achieve the independence of his
country is doing only what Englishmen will do if it is their misfortune
to be invaded and conquered by the Germans in the course of the present
war’], warning that the executions would make martyrs of them; discarded
a defence of Roger Casement considering it a lost cause (though 25 copies
were afterwards published in 1922); his letter “Shall Roger Casement
Hang?” rejected by The Times but printed in Manchester
Guardian, 22 July 1916, and eleventh-hour appeal from his hand also
appearing in The Daily News (2 Aug. 1916); contribs. ‘The
Betrayal of Ulster’, a letter, to The Irish Statesman (10
Jan. 1920); Heartbreak House first performed at Theatre Guild,
New York (10 Nov. 1920) and later in London (Court Theatre, 18 Oct. 1921);
Back to Methuselah, premiered at Theatre Guild, New York (27 Feb.
1922), and after played at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (9 Oct. 1923);
St. Joan partly written at Eccles Hotel, Glengarriff, Summer 1923,
Shaw reading it aloud to Fr. Leonard and Fr. Sheehy; premiered at the
Garrick, New York (1923), and played in London (New Theatre, March 1924);
Shaw receives the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1925; issues The Intelligent
Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928); visits Russia and
reported that he had 'seen the future', 1928; The Applecart (1929),
first played at the Polish Theatre, Warsaw (29 June 1929) and later at
the Malvern Festival (Aug. 1929), estab. in that year by Sir Barry Jackson;
publication of Collected Plays (1931); issues The Adventures
of a Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932) with ills. by Sir John
Farleigh; issues The Political Madhouse in America and Nearer Home
(1933), published in the US as American Boobs (1934); further
Malvern Fest. plays incl. The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (1934);
The Millionairess (1934); called for a representative commission
of enquiry into the Casement diaries (Irish Press, 15 March 1937);
In Good King Charles's Golden Days (1939); Buoyant Billions
(1947); issues Sixteen Self-Sketches (1949) and Shakes versus
Shav (1949); fnd., with others, the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation
for trans. of Swedish literature; obtained new universal fame and fortune
through filming of plays, notably Pygmalion and Major Barbara;
d. 2 Nov; ‘Shaw’s Corner’, his house at Ayot St Lawrence
became property of National Trust; testament left residue of estate to
institute a new British alphabet of at least 40 letters; the standard
biography is by Michael Holroyd; an Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies
is edited by Stanley Weintraub. NCBE JMC DNB DIB DIW DIH DIL OCEL KUN
ODQ SUTH FDA OCIL
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First Performances: Widowers’ Houses [for Independent Theatre Co.] (9 Dec. 1892); The Philanderer (written 1893, staged 1905); Mrs. Warren’s Profession (London Stage Society, 15 Jan. 1902) [banned by Lord Chamberlain up to 1925]; Arms and the Man (London: Avenue Theatre, 21 April 1894), and Do. (NY: Herald Square Theatre, 17 Sept. 1894); Candida (1879; NY: Princess Theatre, 8 Dec. 1903; revived Royal Court Theatre, 26 April 1904); The Man of Destiny (Grand Theatre, Croyden, 1 July 1897); You Never Can Tell (Strand Theatrer, London, 2 May 1900); Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (Stage Society at the Strand, 16 Dec 1900; successfully revived with Ellen Terry as Cicely, 1906); The Devil’s Disciple (NY: 5th Ave. Theatre, 4 Oct. 1897); The Common Sense of Municipal Trading (1904); Caesar and Cleopatra (written 1898-99; performed Chicago Univ., 1901; Berlin, 1907; London, 25 Nov. 1907) [produced by Mrs Patrick Campbell]; Man and Superman (Royal Court Theatre, 23 May, 1905) [published 1903; first performed May 1905]; John Bull’s Other Island (London: Royal Court, 1 Nov. 1904; revived Dublin Abbey, Sept. 1916); Major Barbara (Royal Court Theatre, 28 Nov. 1905); The Doctor’s Dilemma (Royal Court Theatre, 20 Nov. 1906); Pygmalion (Lessing Theatre, Berlin, 1 Nov. 1913) [var. Vienna DIL], and Do. (London: His Majesty’s, 11 April 1914) [with Sir Herbert Tree and Mrs Campbell]; Getting Married (Haymarket Theatre, 12 May 1908); The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet (Abbey Theatre, 25 Aug. 1909); Misalliance (Duke of York’s Theatre, 23 Feb 1910); Fanny’s First Play (1 Jan. 1912) [var. 1911 DIL] [for Lillah McCarthy, wife of Granville-Barker]; Androcles and the Lion (Berlin, 25 Nov. 1912; St James, 1 Sept. 1913); Heartbreak House (New York Theatre Guild, 10 Nov. 1920; London: Court Theatre 18 Oct. 1921); Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (New York Theatre Guild, 27 Feb. 1922; Birmingham Repertory Theatre, 9 Oct 1923); Saint Joan (NY: Garrick Theatre, 1923); Do., (London: New Theatre, 26 Mar. 1924) [with Sybil Thorndike]; The Applecart: A Political Extravaganza (Warsaw: Polish Theatre, 29 June 1929; Malvern Festival, Aug. 1929); Too True to Be Good (Colonial Theatre, Boston, 29 Feb. 1932; Malvern Fest., Aug. 1932) [var. 1938]; In Good King Charles’s Golden Days (Malvern Fest., 11 Aug., 1939); Geneva (Malvern Fest., 11 Aug. 1939) [var. 1936].
Fiction, Immaturity (1879), and Do., with autobiographical preface (1930); The Irrational Knot (1880; London: Constable 1931), serialised in Our Corner, 1885-87; Love Among the Artists (1881), serialised in Our Corner, 1887-88; Cashel Byron’s Profession (1882-83), ser. in socialist monthly To-day, 1885-86; and Do. [rep. edn.] (London: Constable 1932); An Unsocial Socialist (1883) [ser. in To-Day in 1884].
Plays (published editons), Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, 2 vols. [Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny, & You Never Can Tell / Widowers’ Houses, The Philanderer, & Mrs. Warren’s Profession] (London: Grant Richards 1898); Three Plays for Puritans [Caesar and Cleopatra; Captain Brassbound’s Conversion; The Devil’s Disciple] (London: Grant Richards 1901); also Stanley Weintraub, ed., St. Joan (NY: Bobs Merrill 1971)
Prose, The Quintessence of Ibsenism (London: Walter Scott 1891); How to Settle the Irish Question (Dubln: Talbot 1917); The Fabian Society, Its Early History (London: Fabian Soc. 1899); Common Sense About the War (Nov. 1914); Dramatic Opinions and Essays by G. Bernard Shaw, containing as well A Word on the Dramatic Opinions and Essays of G. Bernard Shaw by James Huneker, 2 vols. (NY: Brentano’s MCMVI [1906], 447pp. and 462pp; The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (London: Constable; NY: Brentano’s 1928); What I really Wrote About the War (London: Constable 1931); Essays in Fabian Socialism (London: Constable 1932); Music in London 1890-1894 (London: Constable 1932); Our Theatres in the Nineties, 3 vols. (London: Constable 1932); An Unsocial Socialist (London: Constable 1932); The Adventures of a Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932) [vide same title under Mortimer O’Sullivan]; The Political Madhouse in America and Nearer Home (London: Constable 1933), Do., issued as American Boobs (Hollywood US: E. O. Jones 1933); Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings (NY: Dodd, Mead 1934);Collected Prefaces (London: Constable & Co.; Calcutta: OUP; Toronto: Macmillan 1934), 802pp.; Do., rep. in also in Complete Plays with Prefaces, 6 vols. (NY 1962); Vol. 2 [same pagination], p.443; and Do., rep. as Dan H. Laurence & Daniel J. Leary, The Complete Prefaces, ed. Vol. 1 [1889-1913] (London: Allen Lane/Penguin 1993), 608pp.[630pp.]; Vol. II [1914-1929] (London: Allen Lane/Penguin 1995), 642pp.; London Music 1888-89 as heard by Corno di Bassetto (London: Constable 1937); Shaw Gives Himself Away: An Autobiographical Miscellany (Newtown 1939) [incl. ‘In the Days of My Youth’, etc.]; Everybody’s Political What’s What? (1944); Sixteen Self-Sketches (London: Constable 1949); Shakes versus Shav (1949); Bernard Shaw’s Rhyming Picture Guide to Ayot Saint Lawrence (Luton: Leagrave Press MCML [1950]), 35pp. [Mr. Shaw’s last completed work ill. by his own photographs and written in ‘doggerel Hudibrastics’]; Our Theatres in the Nineties, 3 vols. (London, 1932) [Shaw’s Saturday Review theatre criticism]; Bernard Shaw, Sixteen Self Sketches (London, 1949); F. E. Lowenstein, The Rehearsal Copies of Bernard Shaw’s Plays (London: Reinhardt & Evans 1950); Stanley Weintraub, ed., An Unfinished Novel (London: Constable; NY: Dodd, Mead 1958); Dan H. Laurence, Platform and Pulpit (London: Hart-Davis 1961) [47 lectures, sermons, and broadcasts]; Edwin Wilson, ed., Shaw on Shakespeare (NY: EP Dutton 1961); The Shaw Alphabet Edition of Androcles (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1962); Dan H. Laurence and David H. Green, eds., The Matter with Ireland (London: Hart Davis; NY: Hill & Wang 1962); Complete Plays with Prefaces, 6 vols. (NY: Dodd, Mead 1963) [infra]; Warren S. Smith, ed., Religious Speeches of Bernard Shaw (Penn. State UP 1963); Dan H. Laurence, ed., Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters, 4 vols. (London, 1965-1988); Stanley Weintraub, ed., and sel., An Autobiography, 1856-98 (NY: Weybright & Talley 1969); Weintraub, ed. and sel., An Autobiography 1898-1950 (NY, Weybright & Talley 1970), issued jointly as Shaw, An Autobiography 1856-1898 and 1898-1950, 2 vols. (London: Max Reinhardt 1969-70); Dan H. Lawrence, ed., The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays With Their Prefaces, 7 vols. (London, Sydney, Toronto, 1971-1974); Louis Crompton, ed., The Great Composers: Reviews and Bombardments (Berkeley: California UP 1978); Lawrence Shaw’s Music, 3 vols. (London, 1981); Stanley Weintraub, ed., Bernard Shaw: The Diaries 1885-1897, 2 vols. (Pennsylvania, 1986); Stanley Weintraub, ed., Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene 1885-1950 (Pennsylvania State UP 1989); A. M. Gibbs, ed., Shaw: Interviews and Recollections (Iowa City: Iowa UP 1990); Brian Tyson, ed., Bernard Shaw’s Book Reviews (Pennsylvania State UP 1991); Bernard F. Dukore, ed., Bernard Shaw: The Drama Observed, Vols. 1-4 (Pennsylvania State UP 1994) [rev. edn. of his Drama Observed, containing reviews 1880-1950]; Dan H. Laurence, ed., John Bull’s Other Island [the definitive text] (Harmonsworth: Penguin 1994), 168pp.; J. Percy Smith, ed., Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells (Toronto UP 1995), 242pp. [an edition of the letters]; Tyson, ed., Bernard Shaw’s Book Reviews, Vol. 2: 1884-1950 (Pennsylvania State UP 1996), 588pp.; Dukore, ed., "Not Bloody Likely!" and Other Quotations from Bernard Shaw (Columbia UP 1997), pp.214.
Miscellaneous ‘The Roger Casement Trial; An Unpublished Statement’ [signed 19 Dec. 1934, and presented to Julius Klein; later printed in the Letters, ed., Dan. H. Laurence], in Robin Skelton and David R. Clark, eds., Irish Renaissance [A Gathering of Essays, Memoirs, and Letters from the Massachusetts Review] (Dolmen Press 1965), pp.94-96 [see under Casement]; Banned in Ireland, Censorship & the Irish Writer, intro. and ed. Julia Carlson [for Article 19] (Georgia UP; London: Routledge 1990), includes G. Bernard Shaw, ‘The Irish Censorship’ [Irish Statesman 11 (1928), pp.206-08].
Correspondence Dan. H. Laurence, ed., Collected Letters 1874-1897 (London: Reinhart; NY: Dodd, Mead 1965); Laurence, ed., Collected Letters 1898-1810 (London: Reinhart; NY: Dodd, Mead 1972); Laurence, ed., Collected Letters, 1911-1925 (London: Max Reinhardt; New York: Viking Press 1985); Laurence, ed., Collected Letters 1926-1950 (London: Max Reinhardt; New York: Viking 1988); Daniel J. O’Leary, ed., Letters from Margaret: Correspondence between G. B. Shaw and Margaret Wheeler (London: Chatto & Windus 1992); Dan L. Lawrence and Nicholas Grene, eds., Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey: A Correspondence and Record (Gerrards Cross; Colin Smythe 1993), 211pp.; J. Percy Smith, ed., Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells (Toronto UP ?1995), 242pp.; Jeremy & Nicole Wilson, eds., T. E. Lawrence, Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, Vol. 1 (Hants: Castle Hill 2001), 247pp.
Complete Plays of Bernard Shaw (Odhams Press Ltd. 1934) [with a ‘Warning from the Author’; ‘and 42 titles; 1219pp.; contains the plays, ‘Widowers’ Houses’; ‘The Philanderer’; ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’; ‘Arms and the Man’; ‘Candida’; ‘The Man of Destiny’; ‘You Never Can Tell’; ‘The Devil’s Disciple’; ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’; ‘Captain Brassbound’s Conversion’; ‘Man and Superman’; ‘John Bull’s Other Island’; ‘How he Lied to Her Husband’; ‘Major Barbara’; ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’; ‘Getting Married’; ‘The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet’; ‘Misalliance’; ‘The Dark Lady of the Sonnets’; ‘Fanny’s First Play’; ‘Androcles and the Lion’; ‘Over-Ruled’; ‘Pygmalion’; ‘ Heartbreak House’; ‘Great Catherine’; ‘O’Flaherty V.C.’ [infra]; ‘The Inca of Perusalem’; ‘Augustus Does His Bit’; ‘Annajaska, The Bolsehevik Empress’; ‘Back to Methuselah’; ‘Saint Joan’; ‘The Applecart’; ‘Jitta’s Atonement’; ‘The Admirable Bashville, or The Fatal Gazogene’; ‘The Fascinating Foundling’; ‘The Music-Cure’; ‘Too True to Be Good’; ‘Village Wooing’; ‘On the Rocks’]; Dan H. Laurence, ed., Selected Short Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1988).
Complete Prefaces by Bernard Shaw (London: Constable; OUP: Bombay; Tor: Macmillan 1934), 802pp., with the author’s ‘Introduction’, signed 4 Dec. 1933 [SOCIOLOGICAL, ‘Getting Married’; ‘Parents and Children (Misalliance)’; ‘Overruled’; ‘Majora Barbara’; ‘Killing for Sport’; ‘Man and Superman’; ‘Three Plays by Brieux’; ‘The Doctor’s Dillemma’; ‘Imprisonment (English Local Govt., by S & B Webb). POLITICAL, ‘The Apple Cart’; ‘Too Good to be True’; ‘On the Rocks’; ‘Heartbreak House’; ‘The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet’; ‘John Bull’s Other Island’; ‘Family Life in Germany under the Blockade’. RELIGIOUS, ‘Back to Methusalah’; ‘Androcles and the Lion’; ‘Saint Joan’; ‘The Adventure of the Black Girl in her Search for God’. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL & PROFESSIONAL, ‘Immaturity’; ‘The Irrational Knot’; ‘Cashel Byron’s Profession’; ‘Widowers’ Houses (1893 edn.)’; ‘Plays Unpleasant’; ‘Plays Pleasant’; ‘Three Plays for Puritans’; ‘The Dark Lady of the Sonnets’; ‘The Admirable Bashville’; ‘Our Theatre in the Nineties’; ‘Ellen Terry and George Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence’; ‘The Autobiography of a Supertramp’; ‘The Sanity of Art’. Miscellaneous, ‘Pygmalion’; ‘Great Catherine’. Index]. Other Edns. incl. H. G. Earnshaw, ed. [intro. and notes], A Selection from Shaw’s Prefaces (London: Longman Educ. 1977).
Internet Edns: There is an internet edition of Shaw’s pamphlet “O’Flaherty, V.C.”, at the Gutenberg Project [link]; see also Irish Classics Library [infra]
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General Studies
Holbrook Jackson, Bernard Shaw (London: Grant Richards 1907), 233pp.
Desmond MacCarthy, The Court Theatre 1904-07 (London: AH Bullen 1907); Do., rep., with intro. by Stanley Weintraub (Florida: Miami Beach: Atlantic printers 1966).
Gilbert K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw (NY: John Lane 1909) [var. Bodley Head 1914].
Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw [official biography] (Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd 1911; rev. 1932).
P. Howe, Bernard Shaw, a Critical Study (1915).
Frank Harris, Frank Harris on Bernard Shaw, An Unauthorised Biography based on Firsthand Information, with a Postscript by Mr Shaw (1931), ‘unofficial biography’.
Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw, Playboy and Prophet, authorised (1932; first ed. 1911).
St John Ervine, Bernard Shaw: His Life, Work and Friends (London: Constable; NY: William Morrow 1956).
S. C. S. Gupta, The Art of Bernard Shaw (1936).
J. P. Hackett, Shaw, George Versus Bernard (1937).
Hesketh Pearson, Bernard Shaw, His Life and Personality (1942) [var. 1951], also as G.B.S., A Full-Length Portrait (Garden City Publishing Co. 1942); Feliks Topolski, Portrait of G B S (1946) [1,000 copies], 32 b&w ills.
C. E. M. Joad, Shaw (London: Gollancz 1949).
William Irvine, The Universe of G.B.S. (Whittlesey House 1949).
Alick West, A Good Man Fallen among Fabians (London: Lawrence & Wishart 1950).
Pearson, G.B.S., A Postcript (London: Collins 1951).
Desmond MacCarthy, Shaw, The Plays (London: McGibbon & Kee 1951).
Edmund Wilson, essay in Triple Thinkers (Penguin 1952).
J W Krutch, ‘Modernism’ in Modern Drama (Cornell 1953); Arland Ussher, Three Great Irishmen [on Shaw, Yeats and Joyce] (London: Gollancz 1952).
Henderson, Man of the Century (NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts 1956); Eric Bentley. Bernard Shaw (NY: New Directions 1957).
Julian Kaye, Bernard Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Tradition (Norman: Oklahoma UP 1958).
Louis Simon, Shaw on Education (NY: Columbia UP 1958).
Frederick F. W. McDowell, ‘Spiritual and Political Reality: The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles’, in Modern Drama, 3 (September 1960), pp.196-210.
Hesketh Pearson, George Bernard Shaw (Methuen 1961).
Edwin Wilson, ed., Shaw on Shakespeare, anthol. of [his] writings on the plays and productions of Shakespeare (London: Cassell 1962), 280pp.
Richard Ohmann, Shaw, The Style and the Man (Conn: Wesleyan UP 1962).
Audrey Williamson, Bernard Shaw, Man and Writer (NY: Crowell-Collier P; London: Collier-Macmillan 1963), 224pp.
Homer E. Woodbridge, George Bernard Shaw: Creative Artist, pref. Harry T. Moore (1962).
Martin Meisel, Shaw and Nineteenth Century Theatre (NY: Limelight 1963) [var. Princeton UP], and Do., rep. edn. (Conn: Greenwood Publ. [1994]).
Richard Ohmann, Shaw, The Style and the Man (Connecticut 1963).
B. C. Rosset, Shaw of Dublin, The Formative Years (Penn. UP 1964).
R J Kaufmann [var. Kauffman], ed. G. B. Shaw [Twentieth Century Views] (NJ: Prentice-Hall 1965).
Donald Costello, The Serpent’s Eye: Shaw and the Cinema (Indiana: Notre Dame UP 1965).
Simon J Percy, The Unrepetent Pilgrim: A Study of the Development of Bernard Shaw (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1965).
John O’Donovan, Shaw and the Charlatan Genius: A Memoir (Dublin: Dolmen 1965; Chester Springs: Dufour Eds. 1966), 18 ills.
Harold Fromm, Bernard Shaw and the Theatre of the Nineties (Lawrence: Kansas UP 1967).
Bertholt Brecht, ‘Ovation für Shaw’, from Gesammelt Werke 15, Schriften zum Theater 1 [Werkausgabe] (Franfurt im Mainz: Suhrkamp 1967), pp.96-101, rep. in Jürgen Schneider & Ralf Sotscheck, Ireland: Eine Bibliographie selbständiger deutschsprachiger [Publikationen 16. Jahrhundret bis 1989] (verlag de Georg Büchner Buchhandlung 1989), pp.153-55.
Olivia Coolidge, George Bernard Shaw (NY: Houghton Mifflin 1968).
Colin Wilson, Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (London & NY: Atheneum 1969), 306pp;
A. M. Gibbs, Shaw [Writers and Critics Ser.] (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd 1969), 120pp., with bibl.
Louis Crompton, Shaw the Dramatist (Lincoln: Nebraska UP 1969).
Stanley Weintraub, ‘Recent Shavian Criticism', Éire-Ireland, 4, 4 (Winter 1969), pp.73-81.
R. B. Dietrich, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Superman: A Study of Shaw’s Novels (Gainsville: Florida UP 1969).
G. E. Brown, George Bernard Shaw (London: Evans Bros. 1970).
Dan H. Lawrence, ed., Bodley Head Bernard Shaw (London 1970) [q.pp.]
Rose Zimbardo, ed., 20th c. Interpretations of Major Barbara, coll. crit. essays (NY: Prentice Hall 1970), 124pp.
Stanley Weintraub, ‘The Making of an Irish Patriot: Bernard Shaw 1914-1916', in Éire-Ireland, 5, 4 (Winter 1970), pp.9-27.
Bernard F. Dukore, Bernard Shaw, Director (Seattle: Washington UP 1971); Stanley Weintraub, Journey to Heartbreak (NY: Weybright & Talley 1971).
Elsie B. Adams, Bernard Shaw and the Aesthetes (Ohio State UP 1971).
Margery M. Morgan, The Shavian Playground (London: Methuen 1972).
Daniel J. O’Leary, ‘Shaw’s Blakean Vision: A Dialectic Approach to Heartbreak House’, Modern Drama, 15 (May 1972), pp.89-103.
William Robert Rodgers, Irish Literary Portraits: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, George Moore, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St John Gogarty, F.R. Higgins, A.E. [broadcast conversations with those who knew them] (London: BBC 1972).
Maurice Valency [sic], The Cart and the Trumpet (OUP 1973).
Vincent Wall, Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion to Many Players (Ann Arbour: Michigan UP 1973).
Charles A. Berot, Bernard Shaw, and the Art of Drama (Illinois UP 1973), 343pp.
Paul Hummert, Bernard Shaw’s Marxian Romance (Nebraska UP 1973).
Josephine Johnson, Bernard Shaw’s ‘New Woman’ [Florence Farr] (Gerrards Cross 1975).
Alfred Turco, Shaw’s Moral Vision (Cornell UP 1976).
Michael Holroyd, ‘G.B.S and Ireland’, in Sewanee Review (Winter 1976), c.p.52.
Rodelle Weintraub, ed., Fabian Feminist: Bernard Shaw and Women (London: Reinhardt 1977).
Nathaniel Harris, The Family of George Bernard Shaw (London 1977).
Eldon C. Hill, George Bernard Shaw (NY: Twayne 1978), 184pp. [with index].
Michael Holroyd, ed., The Genius of Shaw (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1979) [incls. John O’Donovan, ‘The First Twenty Years’].
Harold Ferrar, ‘The Caterpillar and the Gracehopper: Bernard Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island’, in Éire-Ireland, 15 (Spring 1980), pp.25-45.
Samuel A. Yorks, The Evolution of Bernard Shaw (Washington: Catholic University of America Press 1981).
Warren Smith, S. Bishop of Everywhere: Bernard Shaw and the Life Force (Pennsylvania State UP 1982).
Stanley Weintraub, The Unexpected Shaw (NY: Frederick Ungar 1982); A. M. Gibbs, The Art and Mind of Shaw (NY: St. Martin’s Press 1983).
ohn O’Donovan, G. B. Shaw (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1983).
J. P. Wearing, ed., G. B. Shaw: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him, Vol. 1 [1871-1930]; Arthur Ganz, George Bernard Shaw (London: Macmillan 1983).
Nicholas Grene, Bernard Shaw: A Critical View (1984).
Keith M. May, Ibsen and Shaw (NY: St. Martin’s Press 1985).
Tumer, Tramble T. ‘Bernard Shaw’s "Eternal" Irish Concerns’, Éire-Ireland, 20, 2 (Summer 1985), pp.57 69.
Ivor John Carnegie-Brown, Shaw in His Time (Conn: Greenwood Publications 1985) [rep.].
Elsie B. Adams & Donald D. Haberman, eds., Do., Vol. 2 [1930-1956].
Donald C. Haberman, ed., Do., Vol. 3 [1957-1978] (De Kalb: Northern Illinois UP 1986-87).
Vivian Mercier, ‘New Wine in Old Bottles: Shaw and the Dublin Theatre Tradition’, in Masaru Sekine, ed., Irish Writers and the Theatre (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe; Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble 1986) [qpp.].
Holroyd, Life of G. B. Shaw, Vol. 1, The Search for Power (London: Chatto & Windus; NY: Random House 1988); Vol. 2, The Pursuit of Power (London: Chatto & Windus; NY: Random House 1989); Vol. 3, The Last Laugh (London: Chatto & Windus; NY: Random House 1992); also a fourth vol. comprising the third with bibliography and index (1993) [1988-1993], all reissued as Bernard shaw: The one-volume definitive edition (London: Chatto & Windus 1997), 834pp.
Holroyd, The Shaw Companion (London: Chatto & Windus 1992) [being Vol. 4 with source notes and cumulative index].
A. M. Gibbs, ed., Bernard Shaw, ‘Man and Superman’ and ‘St. Joan’, a collection of critiques (Macmillan Ed. 1992).
Frederick Crawford, ed., The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, no. 12 (Pennsylvania UP 1992), 327pp.; Tracy C. Davis, George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre (Northwestern UP 1994), 216pp.
George B. Byran & Wolfgang Mieder, eds., The Proverbial Bernard Shaw: An Index to Proverbs in the Works of George Bernard Shaw [Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature, No. 41] (Conn: Greenwood Press 1994), 304pp.
Gareth Griffith, The Political Thought of George Bernard Shaw, Socialism and Superior Brains (London: Routledge 1995), 320pp.
Sally Peters, Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman (Yale UP 1996; pb. 1998), 335pp.
Declan Kiberd, John ‘Bull’s Other Islander - Bernard Shaw’, in Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Jonathan Cape 1995), pp.51-63, and ‘St. Joan - Fabian Feminism, Protestant Mystic’, ibid., pp.428-37.
A. M. Gibbs, ‘Bernard Shaw’s Family Skeletons: A New Look’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 1997), pp.57-74.
Declan Kiberd, ‘George Bernard Shaw: Arms and the Man’, in Irish Classics (London: Granta 2000), pp.340-59.
G. K. Chesterton, quoted in Eavan Boland, review of Dan H. Laurence and Daniel J. O’Leary, ed., Bernard Shaw: Complete Prefaces Vol. 1, 1889-1913, Allen Lane/Penguin 1992, 630pp [first of three vols], in Irish Times 7 Sept. 1993.
H. G. Wells, cited in Peter Kemp, review of J. Percy Smith, ed., Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, Toronto UP ?1995, 242pp., in Times Literary Supplement, 20 Oct. 1995, p.6).
W. B. Yeats (after the failure of Todhunter’s Comedy of Sighs, March 1893), in (Autobiographies, 1955, Bk. IV: ‘The Tragic Generation’, q.p.
W. B. Yeats’s letter of refusal to St. John Ervine contains comments on Shaw, cited in John Boyd, ‘St. John Ervine: A Biographical Note’, in Threshold, Summer 1974, p.102.
Patrick Pearse, ‘An English Censorship in Ireland’, in An Claidheamh Soluis, 28 Aug. 1909; cited in Gearóid O’Flaherty, ‘George Bernard Shaw and the Irish Literary Revival’, in P. J. Mathews, ed., New Voices in Irish Criticism, ed. P. J. Mathews Four Courts Press 2000, pp.33-42; p.40.
Daniel Corkery, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature, 1931; Mercier Press Edn. 1966, p.19.
G. E. Brown, George Bernard Shaw (London: Evans Bros. 1970), p.122.
Frank Tuohy, Yeats (1976), p.100.
Thomas Kilroy, ‘Anglo-Irish Playwrights and Comic Tradition’, in The Crane Bag, 3 (1979), pp.19-27.
Declan Kiberd, Anglo-Irish Attitudes [Field Day Pamphlets, No. 6] (Derry: Field Day 1984).
Paul O’Mahony, ‘The Irish psyche imprisoned’, in A. Halliday & K. Coyle, eds., The Irish Journal of Psychology, ‘The Irish Psyche’ [Special Issue], Vol. 15, Nos. 2 & 3 ((Psychol. Soc. of Ireland 1994), pp.456-68.
Lucy McDiarmid, review of Dan H. Lawrence and Nicholas Grene, eds., Shaw, Lady Gregory, and the Abbey: A Correspondence and a Record (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1993) [Irish Liteary Supplement, Spring 1994, pp.4-6.
Barbara Belford, Bram Stoker (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1996), p.306.
Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: The One Volume Definitive Edition (Chatto & Windus 1997), pp.834.
Nicholas Grene on ‘Shaw’, W. J. McCormack, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture (1999, 2001), p.530-31.
Guides & Companions
C. B. Purdom, A Guide to the Plays of Bernard Shaw (NY: Crowell 1963); Edward Wagenknecht, A Guide to Bernard Shaw (1929; reiss. 1971); Michael and Mollie Harwick, Bernard Shaw Companion (London: John Murray 1973), 1933pp. [Chronology; Plots of the Plays; Who’s Who; A Sampler of Quotations; Life of GBS]; Christopher Innes, The Cambridge Companion to George Bemard Shaw (Cambridge UP 1998), 376pp.
Bibliographies
Margery Morgan, File on Shaw (London 1989); Stanley Weintraub, Bernard Shaw: A Guide To Research (1992); T. F. Evans, ed., Shaw: The Critical Heritage 1976); Evans, Shaw and Politics (1991); Dan H. Laurence, Bernard Shaw, A Bibliography (OUP 1983); ‘A Continuing Checklist of Shaviana’ is included in Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, one of three periodicals devoted to his work. See also Bernard F. Dukore, Shaw 14: Shaw and the last Hundred Years [1992] (Penn State UP 1994), 328pp.
Miscellaneous
Michael Holroyd, ‘The Quest for GBS: Misunderstandings between a scholar and a biographer’, in Times Literary Supplement (28 Dec.l 2001), pp.12-14 [relating difficulties with Dan Lawrence and ending, ‘in the calm of retrospect I salute him’.]
Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: 1946), lists Widowers’ Houses, com. ([Independent Theatre Co.]; Royalty Theatre, Soho, 9 Dec. 1892) [Constable 1892]; Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, 2 vols, 1898 [Vol. 1 contains, Widowers’ Houses; Mrs. Warren’s Profession (Stage Soc., at New Lyric, 5 Jan. 1902) [Constable 1893]; The Philanderer (Cripplegate Inst. 20 Feb. 1905; Court, 5 Feb 1907); Vol. 2 contains, Arms and the Man (Avenue Th., 21 April 1894) [Constable 1894]; Candida (Theatre Royal, South Croydon, 30 Mar 1895) [Constable 1894]; The Man of Destiny (Grand Theatre, Croydon, 1st July 1897); You Never Can Tell (Stage Soc., at Royalty 26 1899) [Constable 1896]. Three Plays for Puritans, 1901 [containing The Devil’s Disciple (Bayswater Bijou, 17 Apr 1897); Caesar and Cleopatra (Theatre Royal, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 15 Mar 1899); and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (Stage Soc. at Strand, 16 Dec 1900); Man and Superman, a Comedy and a Philosophy (Court, 23 May 1905) pub. 1903; Passion, Poison and Petrification or The Fatal Gazogene, trag. (Booth in Regent’s Park, 14 July 1905) pub. 1905; John Bull’s Other Island (Court, 1st Nov. 1904) [Constable 1904], and Major Barbara (Court 28 Nov. 1905) [Constable 1905]; also How He Lied to Her Husband (Berkeley Lyceum, NY 26 Sept. 1904) 1907; Interludes of the Playhouse (Playhouse 28 Jan. 1907) [in Daily Mail, 29 Jan. 1907, not reprinted; Press Cuttings, A Topical Sketch compiled from the Editorial and Correspondence [&c]. (Court 9 July 1909) pub. 1909. The Doctor’s Dilemma (Court 20 Nov. 1906) [Constable 1906]; Getting Married (Hay 12 May 1908); and The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 25 Aug. 1909) pub. 1911. Misalliance (Duke of Yorks, 23 Feb 1910); The Dark Lady of the Sonnets (Hay 24 Nov. 1910); and Fanny’s First Play (Little, 19 April 1911) 1914. Androcles and the Lion (St James, 1 Sept. 1913) [Constable 1911]; Over-ruled (Duke of Yorks, 14 Oct. 1912), Pygmalion (Lessing Theatre, Berlin, 1 Nov. 1913; His Majesty’s, 11 April 1914), (1916 [FDA: Constable 1912]); Heartbreak House ([NY 1920] Court 18 Oct. 1921) Constable 1921]; Great Catherine (Vaudeville, 18 Nov 1913); and Playlets of the War [containing O’Flaherty, VC (Lyric, Hammersmith, 20 Dec 1920); The Inca of Perusalem (Bermingham Rep., 9 Oct 1916); Augustus Does His Bit (Stage Soc., Court, 21 Jan. 1917); Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress (Coliseum 21 Jan. 1918), pub. 1919; Back to Methuselah, A Metabiological Pentateuch (Birmingham Rep., 9 Oct. 1923) [Constable 1921]; Saint Joan, A Chronicle in Six Scenes and an Epilogue (Theatre Guild, NY, 28 Dec 1923; New [?], 26 March 1924), pub. 1924 [FDA: Constable 1923]; Translations and Tomfooleries, 1924 [containing Jitta’s Atonement, adapted from S. Trebitsch (Schubert Theatre, NY 6 Jan 1923); The Admirable Bashville or Constancy Unrewarded; Press Cuttings; The Glimpse of Reality (Arts, 20 Nov. 1927); Passion, Poison and Petrifactions or the Fatal Gazogene; The Fascinating Foundling; The Music Cure (Little, 28 Jan 1914)]; The Applecart, A Political Extravaganza (Polish Theatre, Warsaw, 29 June 1929; Malvern Festival, Aug. 1929), pub. 1930 [FDA, Constable 1929]; Too True to be Good (Colonial Theatre, Boston, 29 Feb. 1932; Malvern Fest., Aug. 1932); Village Wooing (Tunbridge Wells Rep. 30 Apr 1934); On the Rocks (Winter Gardens, 25 Nov. 1933), pub. 1934; The Simpleton and the Unexpected Isles (Malvern Fest., 29 July 1935), pub. 1935; Three Plays, 1936 [containing The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles; The Six of Calais (Regent’s Park, 17 July 1934); The Millionairess.
Shell Guide to Ireland (1967), under ‘Glengarriff’: Shaw’s St. Joan was partly written at Ilnacullin, with its Italian garden and Martello tower.
Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, A Society and Its Stories (RTE 1987); RTE Film, Candida, Shaw/Christopher FitzSimon; Dear Liar, Shaw and Mrs Campbell/Chloe Gibson, adpt. Jerome Kilty (1966); Man of Destiny, Shaw/Shelah Richards (1964); O’Flaherty V.C., 91, 108, Shaw/Christopher Fitzsimon (1968); Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet, The, 91, Shaw/Chloe Gibson (1962); You Never Can Tell, Shaw/Chloe Gibson.
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Harlow: Longmans 1988); lists Cashel Byron’s Profession (1886), ser. in To-Day, April 1885-March 1886), about a pugilist; Shaw later wrote, ‘I never think of [it] without a shudder at the narrowness of my escape from being a successful novelist.’ His plays first successful in New York in the late 1897s, and then in London under direction of Harley Granville-Barker after 1904; John Bull’s Other Island written for Yeats’s Irish Dramatic Movement, but not staged there; Nobel Prize in 1925. FOR Shaw’s abortive attempts to fund Irish film and correspondence with De Valera, see Kevin Rockett, et al., eds, Cinema & Ireland (1988), 96-7, 108.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2 selects John Bull’s Other Island, with Preface to Politicians from same; Composite Autobiography; The Protestants of Ireland; A Note on Aggressive Nationalism; How to Settle the Irish Question; O’Flaherty VC, A Recruiting Pamphlet; War Issues for Irishmen; [423-514]; Commentary pp.514-15; Vol 3 selects ‘The Censorship’, in The Irish Statesman, 1928 [96-98], and ‘Preface to Immaturity’ [426-34], with other notes additional references.
Hyland Catalogue (No. 214) lists The Legal Eight Hours Question: A Public Debate [with] Mr G. W. Foote (1st edn. 1891), 77pp.; ‘The Commonsense of Municipal Trading (1st edn. 1904), vii+120pp.; The Arts League of Service Annual, 1921-22, contains Shaw, ‘The Art of Rehearsal’ [6 out of 32pp.]; C. L. & V. M. Broad, eds., Dictionary to the Plays and Novels of Bernard Shaw with a Bibliography (1st edn. 1929). [Hyland 219; 1995]. The Sanity of Art (1908); How to Settle the Irish Question (Dublin 1817), 32pp.; bernard Shaw and Karl Marx, A Symposium 1884-1889 (NY 1930) [ltd. edn., 575]; Fabian Essays in Socialism (1899; 1908); Three Plays by Brieux with a Pref. by Bernard Shaw ... English version by Mrs Bernard Shaw et al. (1911), port.
Hyland Catalague (No. 224) lists Henderson, Is Bernard Shaw a Dramatist? (1st edn. 1929) [ltd. edn. 1000]; R. J. Minney, The Bogus Image of Bernard Shaw (1969), ills.; Maurice Holmes, Some Bibliographical Notes on the Novels of Shaw with some Comments by Shaw (1928) [ltd. edn. 5000], 20pp.; Selected Passages from the Works of Bernard Shaw, chosen by Charlotte F. Shaw (1912)
William Archer wrote of Shaw's music criticism that ‘he had a peculiar genius for bringing day-by day musical criticism into vital relation with aesthetics at large, and even with ethics and politics - in a word with life’.
Sean O’Casey on Shaw’s humanism: ‘Man must be his own saviour; man must be his own god. Man must learn, not by prayer but by experience. Advice from God was within ourselves, and nowhere else. Social sense and social development was the fulfilment of the law and the prophets. A happy people made happy by themselves. There is no other name given among men by which we can be saved, but by the mighty name of Man.’ (Sunset and the Evening Star, p.250.)
The Devil’s Disciple, though written in 1896, did not have a West End production until 1907, though it was a hit in America. This time-lapse spanned Shaw’s own development as a writer as well as changing theatrical tastes, and by the time it reached a large London audience the meydey of melodrama was very remote ... by now, if to succeed at any level, melodramatic convention has to be signalled with some considerable sophisticaltion. [See John Stokes’ review of 1994 performance at Olivier Theatre, in Times Literary Supplement, 23 Sept. 1994.]
Heartbreak House: the title refers to the cultivated rich of Europe who brought heartbreak on themselves by disdaining political responsibility. ‘Power and culture’, Shaw’s preface asserts, ‘were in separate compartments’. Power is represented by Boss Mangan.
Shaw wrote only one play set wholly in Ireland, while Act 1 of Pt. 4 of Back to Methusaleh (1921) is set in the Burren. [See TLS review, 1992].
Blanco Posnet dramatizes the conversion of a thief who gives his stolen horse to the mother of a dying child.' (See Lucy McDiarmid, ‘Augusta Gregory, Bernard Shaw, and the Shewing Up of Dublin Castle’, in PMLA, Vol. 109, No.1 (Jan. 1994), pp.26-44.
Berg Collection (New York Public Library) holds Shaw Papers, chiefly consisting of letters, postcards and telegrams, among them an extended series addressed to Siegfried Treebitsch, 1902-1949.
Letters from Margaret: Correspondence between G. B. Shaw and Margaret Wheeler (Chatto & Windus 1992) [a woman who believed - justifiably - that she had left nursing-home with the wrong baby and contacted Shaw; the letters have formed the basis of a stag-play and two tele-programmes]. Reviewed, Times Literary Supplement 25.12.1992.
Lady Gregory regarded Shaw and his wife as very easy guests to entertain at Coole Parke since they had their own car to get about; Shaw’s O’Flaherty VC was composed at Coole, and set in the porch of the house (information from interpretative centre at Coole Park).
Mrs Patrick Campbell is reputed to have said, when Shaw was monitoring a rehearsal of Pygmalion: ‘Some day you’ll eat a pork chop, Joey, and then God help all women!’; this story usually attributed to Ellen Terry, and retaled, ‘if GBS ever lapsed and ate a beefsteak, no woman in London would be safe.’ (See letter of J. H. Martin, in TLS, 24.5.1996, p.19);
Gaydom? John Sutherland, reviewing Sally Peters, Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman [Yale UP 1995], indicates that she has no evidence for her assertion that he was gay, his supposed homosexuality explaining his curtailed sexual appetite. (‘The Wilder loves of Shaw’, Times Literary Supplement, 3 May 1996, p.26.) Stanley Weintraub adds that Shaw, when being sculpted by Kathleen (Lady) Scott, the widow of the explorer, who wore mannish garb as she worked, remarked: ‘No woman born ever had a narrower escape from being a man. My affection for you is the nearest I ever came to homosexuality.’ ( Times Literary Supplement, 31 May 1995, p.17.)
Portraits: full length figure outside National Gallery of Ireland (q. sculpt.); Augustus John, portrait in oil; also oil portrait by John Collier, signed 1927 [NGI]; also black and red chalk portrait by William Rothenstein [Abbey Theatre]. A bronze head by Jacob Epstein held in the Glasgow Art Museum, was presented by John McNaughton in 1961.
Carlow Library (HQ) devotes room to G. B. Shaw, where the writer passed one day in connection with the will of Dr. Walter John Gurly which devolved on him; Shaw gifted the Old Assemby Rooms on Dublin St., to the Technical Instruction Comm., 1919, which opened a two-room technical school there in 1923, later becoming the County Library. (See The Irish Times, 25 Oct. 2000).
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)