Misalliance and the Fascinating Foundling

BERNARD SHAW was born in Dublin in 1856. After his arrival in London in 1876 he became an active Socialist and a brilliant platform speaker. He wrote on many social aspects of the day: onCommon Sense about the War(1914),How to Settle the Irish Question(1917) andThe Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism(1928). He undertook his own education at the British Museum and consequently became keenly interested in cultural subjects. Thus his prolific output included music, art and theatre reviews, which were collected into several volumes such asMusic in London 1890–1894(3 vols, 1931);Pen Portraits and Reviews(1931); andOur Theatres in the Nineties(3 vols, 1931). He also wrote five novels and some shorter fiction, includingThe Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser TalesandCashel Byron’s Profession, both published in Penguin’s Bernard Shaw Library.

He conducted a strong attack on the London theatre and was closely associated with the intellectual revival of British theatre. His plays fall into several categories: ‘Plays Pleasant’; ‘Plays Unpleasant’; comedies; chronicle-plays; ‘metabiological Pentateuch’ (Back to Methuselah, a series of plays); and ‘political extravaganzas’. Bernard Shaw died in 1950.