Pygmalion (Broché)

Biographie de George Bernard Shaw

Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. Although essentially shy, he created the persona of G.B.S., the showman, satirist, controversialist, critic, pundit, wit, intellectual buffoon and dramatist. Commentators brought a new adjective into English : Shavian, a term used to embody all his brilliant qualities. 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 : on Common Sense about the War (1914), How to Settle the Irish Question (1917) and The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1918). 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 as Music In London 189o-1894 (3 vols., 1931) ; Pen Portraits and Reviews (1931) ; and Our Theatres in the Nineties (13 vols., 1931).
He also wrote five novels, including Cashel Byron's Profession (published by Penguin), and a collection of shorter works issued as A Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales (also in Penguin). Shaw conducted a strong attack on the London Theatre and was closely associated with the intellectual revival of British Theatre. His many plays (the full canon runs to 51) fall into several categories : "Plays Pleasant" ; "Plays Unpleasant" ; "Plays for Puritans" ; political plays ; chronicle plays ; "metabiological Pentateuch" (Back to Methuselah) in five plays ; extravaganzas ; romances ; and fables.
He died in 1950. Nicholas Grene was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of Cambridge. He is now Professor of English Literature at Trinity College. His books include Synge : A Critical Study of the Plays (1975), Bernard Shaw : A Critical View (1984), and The Politics of Irish Drama (1999). Dan H. Laurence, editor of Shaw's Collected Letters, his Collected Plays with their Prefaces, Shaw's Music and (with Daniel Leary) The Complete Prefaces, was Literary Adviser to the Shaw Estate until his retirement in 199o.
He is Series Editor for the works of Shaw in Penguin.