George Bernard Shaw

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George Bernard Shaw
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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

• George Bernard Shaw(1856 - 1950)
• Category  Irish LiteratureBorn  July 26,
  1856Dublin, IrelandDied  November 2,
  1950Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England

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Biography(1)

• George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin on 26th
  July, 1856. His father, George Carr Shaw, a corn
  miller, was also an alcoholic and therefore there
  was very little money to spend on George's
  education. George went to local schools but never
  went to university and was largely self-taught.
• After working in an estate office in Dublin, Shaw
  moved to London in March, 1876. Shaw hoped to
  become a writer and during the next seven years
  wrote five unsuccessful novels. He was more
  successful with his journalism and contributed to
  Pall Mall Gazette. Shaw got on well with the
  newspaper's campaigning editor, William Stead,
  who attempted to use the power of the popular
  press to obtain social reform.
• In 1882 Shaw heard Henry George lecture on land
  nationalization. This had a profound effect on
  Shaw and helped to develop his ideas on
  socialism. Shaw now joined the Social Democratic
  Federation and its leader, H. H. Hyndman,
  introduced him to the works of Karl Marx. Shaw
  was convinced by the economic theories in Das
  Kapital but was aware that it would have little
  impact on the working class. He later wrote that
  although the book had been written for the
  working man, "Marx never got hold of him for a
  moment. It was the revolting sons of the
  bourgeois itself - Lassalle, Marx, Liebknecht,
  Morris, Hyndman, Bax, all like myself, crossed
  with squirearchy - that painted the flag red. The
  middle and upper classes are the revolutionary
  element in society the proletariat is the
  conservative element."

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Biography(2)

• Shaw became an active member of the Social
  Democratic Federation (SDF), and became friends
  with others in the movement including William
  Morris, Eleanor Marx, Annie Besant, Walter Crane,
  Edward Aveling and Belfort Bax. In May 1884 Shaw
  joined the Fabian Society and the following year,
  the Socialist League, an organisation that had
  been formed by Morris and Marx after a dispute
  with H. H. Hyndman, the leader of the SDF.
• George Bernard Shaw gave lectures on socialism on
  street corners and helped distribute political
  literature. On 13th November he took part in a
  demonstration in London that resulted in the
  Bloody Sunday Riot. However, he always felt
  uncomfortable with trade union members and
  preferred debate to action.
• By 1886, Shaw tended to concentrate his efforts
  on the work that he did with the Fabian Society.
  The society that included Edward Carpenter, Annie
  Besant, Walter Crane, Sidney Webb and Beatrice
  Webb believed that capitalism had created an
  unjust and inefficient society. They agreed that
  the ultimate aim of the group should be to
  reconstruct "society in accordance with the
  highest moral possibilities".

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Biography(3)

• The Fabian Society rejected the revolutionary
  socialism of the Social Democratic Federation and
  were concerned with helping society to move to a
  socialist society "as painless and effective as
  possible". This is reflected in the fact that the
  group was named after the Roman General, Quintus
  Fabius Maximus, who advocated the weakening the
  opposition by harassing operations rather than
  becoming involved in pitched battles.
• The Fabian group was a "fact-finding and
  fact-dispensing body" and they produced a series
  of pamphlets on a wide variety of different
  social issues. Many of these were written by Shaw
  including The Fabian Manifesto (1884), The True
  Radical Programme (1887), Fabian Election
  Manifesto (1892), The Impossibilities of
  Anarchism (1893), Fabianism and the Empire (1900)
  and Socialism for Millionaires (1901).
• In his pamphlets George Bernard Shaw argued in
  favour of equality of income and advocated the
  equitable division of land and capital. Shaw
  believed that "property was theft" and believed
  like Karl Marx that capitalism was deeply flawed
  and was unlikely to last. However, unlike Marx,
  Shaw favoured gradualism over revolution. In a
  pamphlet, that he wrote in 1897 Shaw predicted
  that socialism "will come by prosaic installments
  of public regulation and public administration
  enacted by ordinary parliaments, vestries,
  municipalities, parish councils, school boards,
  etc."

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Biography(4)

• Shaw worked closely with Sidney Webb in trying to
  establish a new political party that was
  committed to obtaining socialism through
  parliamentary elections. This view was expressed
  in their Fabian Society pamphlet A Plan on
  Campaign for Labour.
• In 1893 Shaw was one of the Fabian Society
  delegates that attended the conference in
  Bradford that led to the formation of the
  Independent Labour Party. Three years later Shaw
  produced a report for the Trade Union Congress
  (TUC) that suggested a political party that had
  strong links with the trade union movement. In
  1899 Shaw served on the TUC committee that looked
  into the best way to mobilize the political power
  of the labour movement.
• On 27th February 1900 the Fabian Society joined
  with the Independent Labour Party, the Social
  Democratic Federation and trade union leaders to
  form the Labour Representation Committee (LRC).
  The LRC put up fifteen candidates in the 1900
  General Election and between them they won 62,698
  votes. Two of the candidates, Keir Hardie and
  Richard Bell won seats in the House of Commons.
  The party did even better in the 1906 election
  with twenty nine successful candidates. Later
  that year the LRC decided to change its name to
  the Labour Party.

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LIFE STORIES(1)

• 4/21/1894   
• Shaw, Arms and the Man
• On this day in 1894 George Bernard Shaw's
  Arms and the Man opened. It was one of his
  earliest plays and the first commercial success
  in a sixty-five play, half-century career. On the
  strength of it Shaw was able to give up being a
  music critic and, at the age of forty, become a
  full-time playwright.

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George Bernard Shaw, Freedom for Women (1891)

• Unless woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty
  to her husband, to her children, to society, to
  the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot
  emancipate herself. It is false to say that woman
  is now directly the slave of man she is the
  immediate slave of duty and as man's path to
  freedom is strewn with the wreckage of the duties
  and ideals he has trampled on, so must hers be.

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J. R. Clynes, Memoirs (1937)

• George Bernard Shaw agreed to take the chair for
  me at a Fabian Society meeting. The meeting was a
  great success. Shaw has always been a brilliant
  speaker as well as a provocative writer. During
  the early years of the Fabian Society he spoke
  constantly at public meetings, drawing crowded
  audiences. He always gave of his best, whether
  there were two thousand listeners or only twenty.
  That is the hallmark of the true artist.

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Pygmalion

• Based on classical myth, Bernard Shaws Pygmalion
  plays on the complex business of human
  relationships in a social world. Phonetics
  Professor Henry Higgins tutors the very Cockney
  Eliza Doolittle, not only in the refinement of
  speech, but also in the refinement of her manner.
  When the end result produces a very ladylike Miss
  Doolittle, the lessons learned become much more
  far reaching. The successful musical My Fair Lady
  was based on this Bernard Shaw classic.