George Bernard Shaw

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Date of birth: 
26 Jul 1856
City of birth: 
Dublin
Country of birth: 
Ireland
Date of death: 
02 Oct 1950
Location of death: 
Ayot Saint Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Apr 1876
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1876-1950

Location: 

Shaw's Corner, Ayot Saint Lawrence, Hertfordshire

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About: 

George Bernard Shaw was an Anglo-Irish playwright and political activist. Born and schooled in Dublin, he came to England in 1876. He educated himself by reading in the British Museum, and started his writing career as a music and literary critic for several periodicals. After unsuccessful attempts at novel writing, Shaw turned to drama. He wrote over sixty plays in the course of his life, including Man and Superman (1903), Pygmalion (1912; posthumously adapted as a musical ‘My Fair Lady’) and Saint Joan (1923). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

Shaw, inspired by Henry George’s work, became a committed socialist in the 1880s. In 1884, he joined the newly formed Fabian Society, and gave lectures and wrote articles to further its causes. Shaw was also a vegetarian, and supported Henry Salt’s Humanitarian League and its commitment to animal rights. During the First World War, he indefatigably campaigned for international peace and negotiation.

Shaw was an outspoken supporter of the Indian independence movement and a great admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he met in 1931 in London. Gandhi was also an admirer of Shaw’s works. Shaw visited India in 1933, but the two could not meet as Gandhi was imprisoned at the time. Shaw also met Rabindranath Tagore in London in May 1913. Two of Shaw’s close female friends later went to India and devoted themselves to Indian causes: Annie Besant and the actress Florence Farr. Shaw met Besant in 1885; she asked him to introduce her to the Fabian Society, and serialized Shaw’s novels The Irrational Knot and Love among Artists in her magazine Our Corner. The actress Florence Farr was at one time Shaw’s mistress, and Shaw frequently met W. B. Yeats at Farr’s home in London. In 1937, Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism was reissued by Krishna Menon’s Pelican Books, inaugurating Penguin’s paperback list.

Connections: 

Mulk Raj Anand, William Archer, Annie Besant, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Robert Bridges, Max Beerbohm, H. N. Brailsford, G. K. Chesterton, W. H. Davies, Bonamy Dobrée, Rajani Palme Dutt, E. M. Forster, M. K. Gandhi, Henry George, Lady Gregory, Frank Harris, C. E. M. Joad, Augustus John, Jiddu Krishnamurti, John Lane, Harold Laski, T. E. Lawrence, Raymond Marriott, Eleanor Marx, V. K. Krishna Menon, Naomi Mitchison, May Morris, William Morris, Gilbert Murray, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sydney Haldane Olivier, A. R. Orage, Paul Robeson, Shapurji Saklatvala, Henry Salt, W. T. Stead, The Sitwells, Rabindranath Tagore, Ellen Terry, W. B. Yeats, Ensor Walters, Avabai Wadia, Sidney Webb, Beatrice Potter Webb, H. G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Israel Zangwill.

Network: 
Mulk Raj Anand
Organizations: 
Bodley Head
Fabians
Penguin Books
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Published works: 

A Manifesto, Fabian Tracts 2 (London: Standring, 1884)

Cashel Byron’s Profession (London: Modern Press, 1886)

An Unsocial Socialist (London: Sonnenschein, Lowrey, 1887)

The Quintessence of Ibsenism (London: Scott, 1891)

Widowers’ Houses (London: Henry, 1893)

Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, 2 vols (London: Grant Richards, 1898)

The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Ring of the Niblungs (London: Grant Richards, 1898)

Love among the Artists (unauthorized edition, Chicago: Stone, 1900; authorized, revised edition, London: Constable, 1914)

Three Plays for Puritans (London: Grant Richards, 1901)

Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy (Westminster: Constable, 1903)

The Common Sense of Municipal Trading (Westminster: Constable, 1904)

Fabianism and the Fiscal Question: An Alternative Policy (London: Fabian Society, 1904)

The Irrational Knot (London: Constable, 1905)

Dramatic Opinions and Essays, 2 vols (London: Constable, 1907)

John Bull’s Other Island and Major Barbara, also includes How He Lied to Her Husband (London: Constable, 1907)

The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists Being Degenerate (London: New Age Press, 1908)

Press Cuttings (London: Constable, 1909)

The Doctor’s Dilemma, Getting Married, and The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet (London: Constable, 1911)

Misalliance, The Dark Lady of Sonnets, and Fanny’s First Play, with a Treatise on Parents and Children (London: Constable, 1914)

Common Sense about the War (London: Statesman, 1914)

Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion (London: Constable, 1916)

How to Settle the Irish Question (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1917; London: Constable, 1917)

Peace Conference Hints (London: Constable, 1919)

Heartbreak House, Great Catherine, and Playlets of the War (London: Constable, 1919)

Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (London: Constable, 1921)

Saint Joan (London: Constable, 1924)

(with Archibald Henderson) Table-Talk of G. B. S.: Conversations on Things in General between George Bernard Shaw and His Biographer (London: Chapman & Hall, 1925)

Translations and Tomfooleries (London: Constable, 1926)

The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (London: Constable, 1928); enlarged and republished as The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism, 2 vols (London: Penguin, 1937)

Immaturity (London: Constable, 1930)

The Apple Cart (London: Constable, 1930)

What I Really Wrote about the War (London: Constable, 1930)

Our Theatres in the Nineties (London: Constable, 1931)

Music in London, 1890-1894 (London: Constable, 1931)

The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God (London: Constable, 1932)

Too True to Be Good, Village Wooing & On the Rocks: Three Plays (London: Constable, 1934)

The Simpleton, The Six, and The Millionairess (London: Constable, 1936)

London Music in 1888-89 as Heard by Corno di Bassetto (Later Known as Bernard Shaw), with Some Further Autobiographical Particulars (London: Constable, 1937)

Geneva: A Fancied Page of History in Three Acts (London: Constable, 1939; enlarged, 1940)

Shaw Gives Himself Away: An Autobiographical Miscellany (Newtown, Montgomeryshire: Gregynog Press, 1939)

In Good King Charles’s Golden Days (London: Constable, 1939)

Everybody’s Political What’s What? (London: Constable, 1944)

Major Barbara: A Screen Version (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1946)

Geneva, Cymbeline Refinished, & Good King Charles (London: Constable, 1947)

Sixteen Self Sketches (London: Constable, 1949)

Buoyant Billions: A Comedy of No Manners in Prose (London: Constable, 1950)

An Unfinished Novel, ed. by Stanley Weintraub (London: Constable, 1958)

Shaw: An Autobiography, 1856-1898, compiled and ed. by Weintraub (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1969)

Shaw: An Autobiography, 1898-1950. The Playwright Years, compiled and ed. by Weintraub (London: Reinhardt, 1970)

Passion Play: A Dramatic Fragment, 1878, ed. by Jerald E. Bringle (Iowa City: University of Iowa at the Windhover Press, 1971)

The Road to Equality: Ten Unpublished Lectures and Essays, 1884-1918, ed. by Louis Crompton and Hilayne Cavanaugh (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971)

Flyleaves, ed. by Dan H. Laurence and Daniel J. Leary (Austin, Tex.: W. Thomas Taylor, 1977)

Bernard Shaw: The Diaries 1885-1897, 2 vols, ed. by Weintraub (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986)

Contributions to periodicals: 

Shaw wrote book reviews for Pall Mall Gazette (1885-8), art criticism for the World (1886-1894), and musical columns in the Star. From 1895 to 1898, he was a theatre critic for the Saturday Review. He was an art critic for Annie Besant’s Our Corner and later contributed to her Anglo-Indian weekly the Commonweal. Shaw also contributed to H. N. Brailsford’s New Leader, and to a large number of periodicals.

Commonweal (‘Indian Cowardice and Edinburgh Pluck’ I, 26 June 1914, pp. 3-4)

Theosophist (‘Mrs Besant as a Fabian Socialist’ 39, October 1917, pp. 9-19)

Current Thought, Madras (‘The Efficacy of Non-Violence’ I, October 1924, pp. 13-14)

New India, Madras (‘Real Disarmament is Impossible: An Interview with Bernard Shaw' 12, 29 May 1928, evening edition, pp. 1-3)

The Hindu, Madras (‘“Won’t Bear Talking About”: “G.B.S.” on Indian Situation: Reply to Dr. Tagore’s Message’, 19 January 1933, p. 7:5)

The Times (‘In Memory of Mrs. Annie Besant' 20 October 1933)

The Dominion, Wellington, and New Zealand Herald (‘Broadcast Ban on Krishnamurti’ 28 March 1934)

Daily Telegraph (‘Mr G. B. Shaw on the Moscow Lecture’, 17 July 1934, p. 12:7)

Madras Mail (‘How India can Serve the Mahatma: Bernard Shaw’s Advice’, 9, 2 October 1937, pp. 4-6)

Manchester Guardian (‘Light from Mr. Shaw on India’s Problems, 23 January 1939, p. 7)

New York Journal-American (‘Shaw Is Sorry, Not Surprised at India’s “No”’ 6, 12 April 1941, pp. 7-8)

Forward (‘G. B. S. on India’ 36, 12 September 1942, p. 4)

The Times (‘Mr. G. B. Shaw on Gandhi “Blunder”’ 27 February 1943, p. 2)

Daily Sketch (‘“G. B. S.” Gives These Views on India, 28 August 1943, p. 4)

Reynolds News (‘G. B. Shaw Gives Churchill a Tip about India’, 1 October 1944, p. 3)

Manchester Guardian (‘Mr Bernard Shaw & the Split Vote Against Mr Amery’, 30 June 1945, p. 6)

The Hindu, Madras (‘Shaw on India’s Demand’, 28 March 1946, p. 5)

New York World-Telegram (‘Shaw Solves India and Other Problems’, 11 May 1946, p. 9)

Times of Ceylon Sunday Illustrated (‘Shaw on New India’, 23 June 1946, p. 3)

Daily Worker (‘Shaw is Questioned on India’, 30 December 1946, p. 2)

New York Journal-American (‘Shaw Sees Little Indian Harmony’, 24 February 1947, p. 2)

Cavalcade (‘G. B. S. on India’, IX, 3 December 1947, p. 4)

The Freethinker (‘G.B.S. and Mrs. Besant’, 63, 11 January 1948, p. 19)

Reviews: 

Cecil Chesterton, Temple Bar 8, August 1906, pp. 97-107

Harold J. Laski, The Rev. M. C. D’Arcy, A. L. Rowse and Kenneth Pickthorn, Criterion 8.31, December 1928, pp. 185-214 (Intelligent Woman’s Guide)

J. S. Collins, Aryan Path 4.3, March 1933, pp. 191-5 (The Adventure of the Black Girl in Her Search for God)

Secondary works: 

Bax, Clifford (ed.), Florence Farr, Bernard Shaw and W. B. Yeats (Dublin: Cuala Press, 1941)

Dutt, Rajani Palme, George Bernard Shaw: A Memoir, and ‘The Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, the famous 1921 article by George Bernard Shaw (London: Labour Monthly, 1951)

Joad, C. E. M. (ed.), Shaw and Society (London: Odhams Press, 1953)

Lawrence, Dan H., Bernard Shaw: A Bibliography, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983)

Rao, Valli, ‘Seeking the Unknowable: Shaw in India’, Shaw 5, special issue, ‘Shaw Abroad’, ed. by Rodelle Weintraub (1985), pp. 181-209

Shah, Hiralal Amritlal, ‘Bernard Shaw in Bombay’, Shaw Bulletin 1.10 (November 1956), pp. 8-10

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Example: 

New York Times, 9 January 1933, p. 12

Content: 

George Bernard Shaw arrived in Bombay in January 1933, and was greeted by a group of Indian journalists, to which he gave this speech. A longer version of this article appeared in the Daily Herald (9 January 1933), under the title ‘Mr Shaw May Visit Gandhi in Jail’. This reported Shaw’s wish to see Gandhi, who was being imprisoned in Poona.

Extract: 

Shaw in Bombay Extols Gandhi  

BOMBAY, Jan. 8. George Bernard Shaw arrived in India for the first time today, confessing his admiration for Mahatma Gandhi as ‘a clear-headed man who occurs only once in several centuries’.

Bronzed by the Eastern sun, Mr. Shaw stood on the deck of the Empress of Britain, which is taking him on a world cruise, and gave Indian newspaper men rapid-fire opinions of the Mahatma and Indian affairs generally.

‘It is very hard for people to understand Gandhi, with the result that he gets tired of people and threatens a fast to kill himself’, Mr. Shaw said. ‘If I saw Gandhi I should say to him, “Give it up, it is not your job.”

‘The people who are the most admired are the people who kill the most. If Gandhi killed 6,000,000 people he would instantly become an important person. All this talk of disarmament is nonsense, for if people disarm they will fight with their fists.’

Referring to Mr. Gandhi’s present crusade against Untouchability, Mr. Shaw said that if an English labourer proposed to marry a duchess he would very soon find out that he was an Untouchable.

‘That gives me enough to think about without bothering to know anything about the Indian Untouchables’, said the author, with a grin.

Indian affairs, he continued, would henceforth have to be dealt with by Indians themselves.

‘In any future disputes between the Indians and British Governments India must not expect any support from other countries’, he declared. ‘From the viewpoint of population, India is the centre of the British Empire. It is quite possible that in the future, instead of India wanting to be separated from England, the time will come when England would make a desperate struggle to get separated from India.'

Relevance: 

The extract shows Shaw’s admiration for Gandhi; Shaw makes an insightful comment on India’s position within the British Empire, and describes the caste system as analogous with the English class system.

Archive source: 

George Bernard Shaw Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin

Fabian Society Archives and Bernard Shaw Collection, Archives Division, London School of Economics Library

Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Bernard F. Burgunder Collection of George Bernard Shaw, Department of Manuscripts and Archives, Cornell University Libraries, Ithaca, New York

1933-40 correspondence and papers related to ‘Political Science in America’ lecture, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Libraries, New York

Manuscript Collections, British Library, St Pancras