Biography of George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was a poet, playwright, novelist, and photographer, born in Dublin, Ireland, to George Carr and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw on 26 July 1856. His early life was hard because his father was an unsuccessful and alcoholic corn businessman, about which Shaw commented in 1910, “… and liberty is the one thing that parents, schoolmasters, and rulers spend their lives extirpating…” (Mazerazer). In 1876 he joined his mother in London, where she taught music, piano, theatre and literature, and greatly influenced Shaw’s career. In education, he attended several schools in Dublin but preferred home-tutoring, theatre, and reading Lord George Gordon Byron and William Blake.

Shaw first worked as where he noted social class differences before becoming a humorist with the Pal Mall Gazette in 1885, an essay writer on education, social class, family, politics and religion, and a music and play critic under the pseudonym Como di Bassetto (Mazerazer). His first fiction novel, Immaturity (1879) was unsuccessful, but later novels like An Unusual Socialist (1887), Love Among the Artists (1881), and Cashel Byron’s Profession (1882), were popular.  Shaw’s plays included: Plays Unpleasant (1898), Candida (1894), The Devil’s Disclipline (1897), Ceasar and Cleopatra (!898), and Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (1921) (Literature Network). He humorously besmirched Shakespeare in the play Shakes versus Shaw (1949), but wrote glowingly about novelists Butler, Henry James, and James Barrie. His last play unfinished was Why She Would Not (1950) (Mazerazer). In politics Shaw joined the Fabian Society to advance socialist ideals of Tolstoy and Gorky, and in 1909 he co-founded the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was also a keen traveler and photographer (Literature Network).

In 1898 Shaw married Charlotte, a fellow Fabian, heiress and actress, and moved to Hertfordshire, but still had flings with Edith Nesbit and Stella Campbell. He was to write later in his play Pygmallion (1912), “… there are two tragedies in life. One is to not get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.” (Mazerazer)

Shaw died accidentally on November 2, 1950, aged 94, and their ashes with his wife were scattered in their garden. He left behind many essays, letters, plays, poems, novels and photographs, which are preserved by the National Museum Trust (Literature Network). His prize money for the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) was used to promote Anglo-Swedish cultural relations (Nobel Prize). The Shaw Festival Theatre started in 1962 in his honor and was opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1972.

Works Cited

Literature Network,. Biography.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Mazerazer, Cary M. ‘Bernard Shaw: A Brief Biography’. English.upenn.edu. N.p., 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Nobel Prize,. ‘George Bernard Shaw – Biographical’. Nobelprize.org. N.p., 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.