G.B. Shaw

G.B.
Shaw
1856-1950
BORN DIED
 26 july 1856  2 November 1950 (Aged
 Portobello, Dublin 94)
 Ireland  Ayot st
Lawrence,Hertfordshire
 England
Occupation
 Play wright
 Critic
 Polemicist
 Political activist
G.B.Shaw early Life & Career
 George Bernard Shaw was the third and youngest child
(and only son) of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda
Elizabeth Gurly Shaw.
 Technically, he belonged to the Protestant“
ascendancy”—the landed Irish gentry-but his
impractical father was first a sinecured civil servant and
then an unsuccessful grain merchant, and George
Bernard grew up in an atmosphere of genteel poverty,
which to him was more humiliating than being merely
poor.
 At first Shaw was tutored by a clerical uncle, and he
basically rejected the schools he then attended; by age 16
he was working in a land agent's office.
 Shaw developed a wide knowledge of music, art, and
literature as a result of his mother's influence and his visits
to the National Gallery of Ireland.
 In 1872 his mother left her husband and took her two
daughters to London, following her music teacher, George
John Vandeleur Lee, who from 1866 had shared
households in Dublin with the Shaws.
 In 1876 Shaw resolved to become a writer, and he joined
his mother and elder sister (the younger one having died)
in London.
 Shaw in his 20s suffered continuous frustration and
poverty. He depended upon his mother's pound a week
from her husband and her earnings as a music teacher.
 He spent his afternoons in the British Museum reading room, writing
novels and reading what he had missed at school, and his evenings in
search of additional self-education in the lectures and debates that
characterized contemporary middle-class London intellectual activities.
 His fiction failed utterly. The semiautobiographical and aptly titled
Immaturity (1879; published 1930)repelled every publisher in London.
 Hisnext four novels were similarly refused, as were most of the articles
he submitted to the press for a decade.
 Shaw's initial literary work earned himless than 10 shillings a year.
 A fragmentposthumously published as AnUnfinished Novel in 1958 (but
written1887–88) was his final false start infiction.Despite his failure as a
novelist in the1880s, Shaw found himself during thisdecade. He became a
vegetarian, asocialist, a spellbinding orator, apolemicist, and tentatively
aplaywright. He became the forcebehind the newly founded (1884)Fabian
Society, a middle-class socialistgroup that aimed at the transform?of
English society not throughrevolution but through “permeation"
 A fragment posthumously published as An Unfinished
Novel in 1958 (but written1887–88) was his final false
start in fiction.
 Despite his failure as a novelist in the1880s, Shaw found
himself during this decade. He became a vegetarian, a
socialist, a spellbinding orator, a polemicist, and
tentatively a playwright.
 He became the force behind the newly founded
(1884)Fabian Society, a middle-class socialist group that
aimed at the transformation of English society not
through revolution but through “permeation"(in Sidney
Webb's term) of the country'sintellectual and political
life.
 Shaw involved himself in every aspect of its activities, most visibly as editor
of one of the classics of British socialism,Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889),
towhich he also contributed two sections.
 Eventually, in 1885, the drama critic William Archer found Shaw
steadyjournalistic work.
 His early journalism ranged from book reviews in the PallMall Gazette
(1885–88) and art criticism in the World (1886–89) to brilliant musical
columns in the Star (as “Cornodi Bassetto”—basset horn) from 1888 to1890
and in the World (as “G.B.S.”) from1890 to 1894.
 Shaw had a good understanding of music, particularly opera, and he
supplemented his knowledge with a brilliance of digression that gives
many of his notices a permanent appeal.
 But truly began to make his mark when he was recruited by Frank Harris to
the Saturday Review as theatre critic (1895–98) in that position he used all
his wit and polemical powers in a campaign to displace the artificialities
and hypocrisies of the Victorian stage of a theatre of vital ideas. He also
began writing his own plays.
Why is G.B.Shaw Famous ?
 George Bernard Shaw is famous for his role in
revolutionizing comedic drama. He was also a
literary critic and a prominent British socialist.
 Shaw's most financially successful work,
Pygmalion, was adapted into the popular
Broadway musical My Fair Lady. He won the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.
How did G.B.Shaw start writing play?
 George Bernard Shaw wrote rather
unmemorable fiction through out his 20s and
early 30s. In 1885 the drama critic William
Archer recruited Shaw to write book, art, and
musical reviews in various publications. In
1895 Shaw began writing for the Saturday
Review as a theatre critic, and from there he
began to write his first plays.
Themes Explore in his work
 George Bernard Shaw's plays arethematically
diverse. He wove threads of humour and
romance between analyses of contemporary
hypocrisies and social tensions.
 About the beginning of the 20thcentury, Shaw
began affixing lengthy prefaces to his plays
that engaged more deeply with their
philosophical foundations.
Major Works
He wrote more than 60 plays.
 Major Barbara (1905),
 The Doctor's Dilemma (1906),
 Pygmalion (1912),
 Androcles and The Lion (1912)

 Saint Joan (1923)
all firmly established Shaw as a leading dramatist

of his time.
Awards
 Academy Awards , USA
 Oscar - 1939 ( BEST WRITING ,Pygmalion
1938)
 Nobel prize in Literature (1925)

G.B. Shaw

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

G.B. Shaw

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

G.B. Shaw

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

G.B.

 The Doctor's Dilemma (1906),

 Androcles and The Lion (1912)

all firmly established Shaw as a leading dramatist

You might also like

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.