Bernard Shaw
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 243
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V. 1. In his introduction Dan H. Laurence notes that 'theatrics' connotes not only activities of a theatrical character but behaviour that manifests itself as theatricality. All the correspondence selected for this volume - most of it hitherto unpublished - relates to Bernard Shaw's theatre dealings and theatrical interest, at the same time attesting to the 'histrionic instinct' and 'theatrified imagination' (his own phrases) of the man who penned them. More than one hundred letters are represented, starting from mid-1889, when Shaw had not yet completed his first play and was known instead as a music critic, journalist, socialist organizer, and street orator. The letters reveal a consummate man of the theatre: a dramatist, director, actor, designer, publicist, financial backer, translator, and critic concerned with such varied issues as censorship, theatre politics, prying journalists, and wireless and television performance. The letters are shaded with histrionic tones of assumed anger, irritation, and anguish. The style invariably is colloquial, free-flowing, ebullient - and personal. v. 2. Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells are among the best-known and most controversial literary figures of the twentieth century. Both were rebelliously critical of the social and political, familial and sexual conventions and structures of their time. They shared broadly similar interests, but their lifestyles differed sharply - as did their views on many subjects, including those discussed in their correspondence: religion, socialism, science, war and world history, the theatre, the profession of authorship, and more. The letters are always forthright, often abusive and quarrelsome, sometimes suggesting that the relationship cannot last. They are also often warm, good-natured, playful, and generous - reflecting a fundamental mutual respect and similarity of outlook, however contrasting the temperament and style. The great majority of the two writers' correspondence is published here for the first time. v. 3. After movie-makers in England bungled film versions of Bernard Shaw's How He Lied to Her Husband and Arms and the Man, producers and directors in Germany and Holland botched those based on Pygmalion, and a Hollywood screenplay desecrated The Devil's Disciple, Shaw took a chance on Gabriel Pascal and gave him permission to produce a movie version of Pygmalion in England. The contract was signed on 13 December 1935 and Pascal, a charming, flamboyant Hungarian emigre with relatively little experience in cinema, did the playwright proud. Shaw's gamble paid off in this Pygmalion, which, to this day, is usually claimed to be the best film version of any of his plays. v. 4. Virtually ignored in histories of twentieth-century British theatre in favour of the more celebrated relationship of Bernard Shaw and Harley Granville Barker, the friendship of Bernard Shaw and Sir Barry Jackson is given prominence in this new book by L.W. Conolly. The collection of 183 letters, all but two of which are previously unpublished, sheds new light on a partnership that for Shaw was the most important of his later playwriting career, and for Jackson was central to his pioneering and acclaimed work in British regional theatre in both Birmingham and Stratford-upon-Avon. v. 5. Bernard Shaw was twenty-four and Sidney Webb twenty-one when they met in October 1880 at a gathering of a debating club called the Zetetical Society. Having sympathetic interests, both men decided, after some personal and joint exploration, to devote their lives to improving the human condition. This collection of 140 annotated letters, 74 of which have never been published, documents the subsequent friendship and collaboration shared by Shaw, Webb, and Webb's wife Beatrice, throughout their lives. v. 6. George Bernard Shaw and Nancy Lady Astor enjoyed a close friendship for over twenty years, from the late 1920s until Shaw's death in 1950. Although opposites in many matters - particularly politics - Shaw and Astor were irresistibly attracted to each other, both being unconventional firebrands with ready wits. This collection of nearly 250 letters between Shaw and Astor - as well as between Astor and Shaw's wife, Charlotte, and Shaw's secretary, Blanche Patch - illustrates the rewarding friendship the two shared and the numerous issues they debated. v. 7. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) once quipped that it is "up to the author to take care of himself." This rich selection of Shaw's correspondence with his US and UK publishers proves how much the dramatist lived up to his own words by providing the details of his steady involvement in the publication of his works. v. 8. Unlikely friends and collaborators, Bernard Shaw and Gilbert Murray carried on a lively and wide-ranging correspondence for more than fifty years. When they began exchanging letters in the late 1890s, Shaw was a renowned Fabian propagandist, reviewer, and author of anti-conventional plays. Murray was a classicist and translator of ancient Greek drama who would eventually become Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford. Beginning with their shared distaste for the popular "well-made plays" of the era, their correspondence quickly expanded into collaboration--Murray helped revise Shaw's Major Barbara, in which he appears as a character-and discussion of a vast range of issues ranging from alphabet reform and psychic phenomena to the League of Nations and international politics.
