George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist.
His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1912) and Saint Joan (1923).
With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, son of an unsuccessful merchant. On leaving school at fifteen, he worked for a time in a land agent’s office, before emigrating to London, where he began a career as a reviewer and writer. Shaw’s famous treatise on imprisonment prepared on behalf of the British Labour Research Office and originally published as preface to Lord Oliver’s report on English & American prison conditions.
“When I was a boy in my teens in Dublin I was asked by an acquaintance of mine who was clerk to a Crown Solicitor, and had business in prisons, whether I would like to go to Mountjoy Prison, much as he might have asked me whether I would like to go through the Mint, or the cellars of the docks … My main impression of the others [prisoners], and the one that has stuck longest and hardest, was that as it was evidently impossible to reform such men, it was useless to torture them, and dangerous to release them.”
Shaw moved to London in 1876 and found it very difficult struggled to establish himself as a writer but embarked on a process of self-education. He became a music and theathre critic. He joined the Fabian Society and became its most prominent member. Shaw’s first successful play was Arms and the Man in 1894 and later Major Barbara, The Doctor’s Dilemma and Caesar and Cleopatra.
In 1938 He wrote the screenplay for My Fair Lady, a movie version of Pygmalion for which he won an Academy Award. He showed admiration for Mussolini and Stalin.
In the year of Shaw’s 90th birthday (1946) he was honoured with the freedom of Dublin and St Pancras in London. Shaw continued to write into his 90’s writing Buoyant Billions, Farfetched Fables and Shakes versus Shav and Why She Would Not, written just before his ninety-fourth birthday and died shortly afterwards.
Shaw was cremated on 6 November 1950 at Golders Green Crematorium . His ashes were mixed with his late wife Charlotte and scattered in their garden beside their statue of Saint Joan.
Shaw was a recipient of the Honorary Freedom of the City of Dublin in 1946. It is the highest honour the City Council may bestow and it is conferred very rarely. The recipient becomes an Honorary Citizen of Dublin and although no financial or other benefits are attached to the award, the prestige which it carries is immense. The Honorary Freedom of Dublin was instituted under the Municipal Privileges Act, 1876 and is currently conferred under the provisions of the Local Government Act
OUR BOOKS ARE SORTED IN THESE CATEGORIES:
 | SHAW, Bernard. & WINSTEN, Clare. Buoyant Billions: A Comedy of No Manners [Limited Edition] SHAW, Bernard. & WINSTEN, Clare. Buoyant Billions: A Comedy of No Manners. In Prose by Bernard Shaw and in Pictures by Clare Winsten. London: Constable, 1949. Royal quarto. pp. 54, [3]. Quarter vellum over pictorial cloth. Of this edition one thousand and twenty five copies only have been printed. A thousand are numbered 1-1000, and […] €275.00 |
 | SHAW, Bernard. Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes and an Epilogue. London: Constable and Company, 1931. Foolscap octavo. Bound by Bickers of London in full crimson morocco, covers framed by a single gilt fillet enclosing in the centre a College oval badge. Spine divided into six panels by five raised bands, title and author in gilt direct in the second anf fourth, the remainder with a […] €225.00 |
 | SHAW, George Bernard Shaw. Deathbed photograph, Ayot St Lawrence, 1950. Original press photograph, gelatin silver print, c. 1950, showing Shaw lying in state in his bedroom at his home in Ayot St Lawrence, England, shortly after his death. The intimate interior includes mantelpiece photographs and a bedside lamp; notably, a portrait of Stalin is visible among the background images, as referenced in the original press […] €375.00 |
 | SHAW, George Bernard. George Bernard Shaw with former Heavyweight Boxing Champion Gene Tunney. 180 x 228mm. Typed on paper on verso; “Shaw and American friend London, England … ”. Dated on verso 7/28/50. In fine condition. In 2010 Tunney’s son; Jay R. Tunney wrote a book on his father’s friendship with Shaw ‘The Prizefighter and the Playwright’. It seemed a strange relationship, as Tunney was forty years younger […] €375.00 |
 | SHAW, George Bernard. Original Press Photograph of H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Chicago Herald. Dated 20/08/1960. 145mm x 175mm. Partial loss to top left-hand corner of photo. In fine condition. Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells are among the best-known and most controversial literary figures of the twentieth century. Both were rebelliously critical of the social and political, familial and sexual conventions and structures of their time. They shared broadly similar interests, […] €275.00 |
 | SHAW, George Bernard. Prefaces: Sociological, Political, Religious, Autobiographical. London: Constable and Company, 1934. Royal octavo. First edition. pp. viii, 802. Bound by Leighton-Straker in black, green and brown morocco with gilt decorations and ‘S’ in gilt on both covers, flat spine titled and dated in gilt, doublures ruled in gilt, brown sprinkled endpapers; red and green endbands. Top edge gilt, remainder blue. Light […] €775.00 |
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