Top 8 Interesting Facts about George Bernard Shaw

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George Bernard Shaw is one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. His plays, essays, and novels have had a huge influence on ... read more...

  1. After losing one of his sisters when he was 20, George Bernard Shaw left Dublin and made his way to London. It was another 29 years before he went back to Ireland.


    George was supported for the majority of his 20s by his mother, who owned a home in South Kensington where she let him reside. A fascinating fact about George Bernard Shaw is that he attempted to publish multiple novels but failed, and along the way, he was forced to work some office jobs. He also adopted a vegetarian diet at this time and developed a beard as long as he was.


    His first foray into television, which he started in 1878, was a drum parody with religious overtones. Like his debut novel, it was abandoned before being completed. Immaturity (1879), his first finished book, was too poor to find publishers and didn't come out until the 1930s.

    For the following four years, Shaw's mother helped to finance his meager writing income. He switched to vegetarianism in 1881 due to financial constraints and then more as a matter of conviction. To conceal a smallpox scar on his face, he grew a beard. When Shaw entered his first love engagement with a woman at the age of 29, his fortunes started to change in his late 20s. He quickly produced two further books, The Unreasonable Knot (1880) and Love Between Artists (1881), neither of which could find a publisher. Both were serialized in the socialist publication "Our Corner" several years later.

    Shaw năm 1879 - Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/
    Shaw năm 1879 - Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/
    Photo: https://d26horl2n8pviu.cloudfront.net/
    Photo: https://d26horl2n8pviu.cloudfront.net/

  2. The most well-known play that George Bernard Shaw composed during his lifetime is Pygmalion, which had its world premiere in 1913. Shaw's play, which tells the narrative of a man trying to teach a cockney flower girl how to be a woman, is frequently cited as one of the funniest pieces in the canon of English literature.


    The following year, the play was performed in Vienna, and shortly after that, in Berlin. Shaw remarked, "Every time one of my plays is performed, the British press makes sure to let everyone know that it's not a boring, blasphemous, unpopular, or failing play of mine. As a result, the directors of Vienna and Berlin urged me to let them stage my play first."


    The British movie, which starred Sir Herbert Tree and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, a professor of phonics and a cockney florist, respectively, was released in April 1914. Shaw and Campbell had once been romantically involved, which greatly interested Charlotte Shaw, but by the time the play had its London premiere, it had all ended. Up until July, when Tree insisted on taking a vacation, the performance drew a sizable audience. After that, production was halted. Later, his co-stars went on tour in America with the play.

    The drama served as the inspiration for the popular musical My Fair Lady, which was adopted in the 1950s and subsequently produced into a film in the 1960s. It was also converted into a successful film in the late 1930s.

    Photo: https://i.thenile.io/
    Photo: https://i.thenile.io/
    Photo: https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/
    Photo: https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/
  3. George Bernard Shaw has been active in politics for most of his life and frequently uses his platform and position to make a point about politics and injustices. However, his stance on the First World War was met with much criticism and was considered fiercely controversial, one of the interesting facts about George Bernard Shaw.


    Shaw ceased composing plays when the war started and instead released a pamphlet titled "Common Sense about the War." He made the case in the pamphlet that both Germany and the Allies were equally to blame for the conflict and that more needed to be done to bring it to a peaceful conclusion. At meetings and rallies, he often advocated against the war.

    Shaw had a false reputation, but the British government recognized his prowess in propaganda, and in early 1917 he was asked by Field Marshal Haig to see the Western Front battlefields. Shaw's 10,000-word report, which focused on the soldier's human qualities, was favorably received, and he was no longer the only one speaking out. He endorsed the sentiment that America's involvement in the war was "first-class moral property for the common cause against socialism" in April 1917, joining the national consensus that supported it.

    Shaw's three short plays saw their world premieres during the conflict. When The Inca of Per Jerusalem, written in 1915, was staged in Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1916, censors objected to it for making life tough for both the British military command and the enemy. In 1917, O'Flaherty VC, a parody of the British government's treatment of Irish recruits, was published at a Royal Flying Corps installation in Belgium after being outlawed in Britain. A licensed youth farce called Augustus Does His Bit debuted at the Royal Court in January 1917.
    The book
    The book "Common Sense about the War" by George Bernard Shaw - Photo: https://www.whytes.ie/
    Photo: https://i.ytimg.com/
    Photo: https://i.ytimg.com/
  4. One of the interesting facts about George Bernard Shaw is that he was a member of the Fabian Society and a devout socialist. All of George Bernard Shaw's life, he was involved in politics. While attending a Henry George gathering in Farringdon, he experienced his political aha moment. A fascinating detail provided by George Bernard Shaw is that shortly after, he came upon Karl Marx's writings, which irrevocably altered his life.


    Shaw eventually joined the Fabian Society, a socialist organization that places a focus on democratic socialism. Throughout the 1880s, Shaw authored and edited several writings for the group, contributing to their rise to fame.


    Shaw participated in the Bradford meeting that resulted in the creation of the Independent Labor Party in January 1893 as a representative of Fabian. He had doubts about the new party's capacity to convert working-class support from sports to politics. He got the convention to approve resolutions that would have eliminated indirect taxes and taxed illegal revenue "to the point of extinction."

    Shaw's political involvement decreased by the late 1890s as he concentrated on establishing himself as a dramatist. He was persuaded to take on the unproven position of "vestryman" (parish councilor) in the St. Pancras borough of London in 1897.
    Shaw in 1894 at the time of Arms and the Man, as a member of the Fabian Society- Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/
    Shaw in 1894 at the time of Arms and the Man, as a member of the Fabian Society- Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/
    Photo: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/
    Photo: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/
  5. An intriguing fact about George Bernard Shaw is that in addition to his popularity as a writer, George Bernard Shaw also achieved acclaim and notoriety for his work as a critic for London newspapers.


    He started working as a critic for both music and art in the 1880s, although he never felt that the position was particularly gratifying. This changed when he began reviewing plays. Shaw's reviews are frequently hilarious and smart, and they have given him a significant following. Although his decisions were not always in the best interests of actors or authors, they did gain him a certain level of respect in the theater world that would prove useful in later years.


    More than 2,700 pages make up the three volumes of Shaw's collected music critiques. The majority of the collection dates back to his six years as a music critic for The Star and The World in the late 1880s and early 1970s, while it spans the British music scene from 1876 to 1950. He believed that music criticism should be entertaining to more people than simply music enthusiasts, and he avoided using technical jargon while writing for laypeople.
    Photo: http://scihi.org/
    Photo: http://scihi.org/
    Photo: https://image3.slideserve.com/
    Photo: https://image3.slideserve.com/
  6. Shaw's major works from the first ten years of the twentieth century focused on moral, social, and personal themes. Man and Superman (1902), which presents Shaw's explanation of creative progress in a combination of theater and accompanying printed material, differs from the others in both content and treatment. Shaw's novel The Occupation of Cashel Byron, which includes the dramatic blank verse The Admirable Bashville (1901), focuses on the imperial connections between Britain and Africa. Although it was immensely popular at the time, John Bull's Another Island (1904), which hilariously portrayed the popular relationship between England and Ireland, was later removed from the standard repertory.


    Major Barbara (1905) poses ethical issues in a novella that challenges the notion that the Salvation Army, when compared to a weapons manufacturer, always holds the moral high ground. Shaw referred to the play The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), which dealt with medical ethics and moral decisions regarding the distribution of limited resources for medical care. He was challenged by Archer to present a death on stage despite his reputation for playing improbable characters, which he achieved by staging a death scene in bed for the character of the anti-hero.

    Shaw's complete plays - Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/
    Shaw's complete plays - Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/
    Play
    Play "Man and Superman" 1902 - Photo: https://i.etsystatic.com/
  7. The majority of Shaw's writing, which was published between 1879 and 1885, consists of five unpopular novels. Immaturity (1879), described by Weintraub as "His Own David Copperfield," is a semi-autobiographical depiction of mid-Victorian England. Weintraub criticizes common marriage in The Irrational Knot (1880), finding "essentially naught more than animated theories" in its lifeless qualities.


    Shaw felt that his third book, Love Between Artists (1881), was a turning point in his intellectual growth, even if it wasn't any more successful than his earlier works. Shaw's first full-length play, Mrs. Warren's Occupation, which premiered in 1882, was foreshadowed by an indictment of society in The Occupation of Cashel Byron Weintraub Speaks (1882).


    Shaw went on to say that he had planned for A Non-Socialist Socialism to be the opening act of a grand narrative about the demise of capitalism. In a study of Shaw's political philosophy, Gareth Griffith finds the book to be a fascinating description of the social and political climate of the 1880s socialist movement.

    The Black Girl's Adventures in Search of God, which was written by Shaw in 1932 while on a trip to South Africa, was the only book Shaw ever wrote after that. The girl with the same name, who was intelligent, inquisitive, and converted to Christianity through a pointless missionary upbringing, ventured off in quest of God. Her trip ended in secularism after several adventures and interactions.

    The fictional work
    The fictional work "Love Between Artists" (1881) - Photo: https://media.gettyimages.com/
    Photo: https://www.qbbooks.com/
    Photo: https://www.qbbooks.com/
  8. Throughout his career, Shaw wrote a lot of stories. Between 1965 and 1988, his letters were published after being edited by Dan H. Laurence, which are interesting facts about George Bernard Shaw. According to Shaw, his letters would fill 20 volumes. Without editing, they fill up, even more, said, Laurence. 2,653 of Shaw's more than a quarter of a million letters, or around 10%, are included in Laurence's four volumes. All of Shaw's letters to The Times were collected in a 316-page book that was published in 2007.


    Weintraub edited Shaw's Diaries from 1885 to 1897, which were released in 1986 in two volumes comprising 1,241 pages. Shaw scholar Fred Crawford reassessed them and stated: "Although Shavians' main concern is for what supplementary material. The diaries are useful as a historical and sociological picture of British life in the late Victorian era given what is known about Shaw's life and work. The demands of other writing after 1897 caused Shaw to stop keeping journals.


    Shaw covered a wide range of subjects in his publications, pamphlets, and occasionally lengthier works. He has written and spoken extensively on a variety of topics, including photography, vegetarianism, religion, language, cinema, and photography.

    His letters and diaries are published - Photo: Photo: https://i.ytimg.com/
    His letters and diaries are published - Photo: Photo: https://i.ytimg.com/
    1949 (22 August) and 1950 (23 May) two letters from George Bernard Shaw. - Photo: https://www.whytes.ie/
    1949 (22 August) and 1950 (23 May) two letters from George Bernard Shaw. - Photo: https://www.whytes.ie/



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