A Bernard Shaw Chronology

Book excerpt: A.M. Gibbs provides an authoritative and comprehensive account of the life, career and associations of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), one of the most eminent and influential literary figures of the modern age. Drawing on a wide range of published and unpublished material, this work illuminates the complex fabric of Shaw's extraordinary career as playwright, novelist, critic, orator, political activist, social commentator, avant-garde thinker and controversialist. Images of Shaw's daily private life, and of his tangled love affairs, flirtations and friendships, are intertwined with the records of his prodigiously productive career as public figure and creative writer, in a fully documented study which is both a scholarly resource and a lively biographical portrait. An introductory chapter explores theoretical issues in biography raised by the chronology form; and a chapter on Shaw's ancestry and family supplies new evidence about his Irish background. A Who's Who section contains thumbnail sketches of over two hundred contemporaries of Shaw who had significant associations with him.