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{{short description|Irish playwright, critic, and polemicist (1856–1950)}}
{{redirect|Bernard Shaw}}
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{{Use British English|date=March 2016}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2024}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name          = George Bernard Shaw
| image         = Bernard-Shaw-ILN-1911-original.jpg
| caption       = Shaw in 1911
| alt           = Middle-aged man with greying hair and full beard
| birth_date    = {{birth date|1856|7|26|df=yes}}
| birth_place   = [[Portobello, Dublin]], Ireland
| death_date    = {{death date and age|1950|11|2|1856|7|26|df=yes}}
| death_place   = [[Ayot St Lawrence]], Hertfordshire, England, UK
| resting_place = [[Shaw's Corner]], Ayot St Lawrence
| pseudonym     = Bernard Shaw
| occupation    = {{hlist|Writer|political activist}}
| citizenship   = United Kingdom (1856–1950)<br>Ireland (dual citizenship, 1934–1950)
| spouse        = {{marriage|[[Charlotte Payne-Townshend]]|1898|1943|end=died}}
| signature     = George Bernard Shaw signature.svg
}}

'''George Bernard Shaw''' (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as '''Bernard Shaw''', was an Irish playwright, critic, [[polemic]]ist, and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture, and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as ''[[Man and Superman]]'' (1902), ''[[Pygmalion (play)|Pygmalion]]'' (1913) and ''[[Saint Joan (play)|Saint Joan]]'' (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary [[satire]] and historical [[allegory]], Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]].

Born in Dublin, in 1876 Shaw moved to London, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the [[Gradualism (politics)|gradualist]] [[Fabian Society]] and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success, ''[[Arms and the Man]]'' in 1894. Influenced by [[Henrik Ibsen]], he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas. By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included ''[[Major Barbara]]'', ''[[The Doctor's Dilemma (play)|The Doctor's Dilemma]]'', and ''[[Caesar and Cleopatra (play)|Caesar and Cleopatra]]''.

Shaw's expressed views were often contentious; he promoted [[eugenics]] and [[English-language spelling reform|alphabet reform]], and [[Vaccine hesitancy|opposed vaccination]] and organised religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the [[First World War]] as equally culpable, and although not a [[Irish republicanism|republican]], castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period. These stances had no lasting effect on his standing or productivity as a dramatist; the inter-war years saw a series of often ambitious plays, which achieved varying degrees of popular success. In 1938 he provided the screenplay for a [[Pygmalion (1938 film)|filmed version]] of ''Pygmalion'' for which he received an [[Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay|Academy Award]]. His appetite for politics and controversy remained undiminished; by the late 1920s, he had largely renounced Fabian Society gradualism, and often wrote and spoke favourably of dictatorships of the right and left—he expressed admiration for both [[Benito Mussolini|Mussolini]] and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. In the final decade of his life, he made fewer public statements but continued to write prolifically until shortly before his death, aged ninety-four, having refused all state honours, including the [[Order of Merit]] in 1946.

Since Shaw's death scholarly and critical opinion about his works has varied, but he has regularly been rated among British dramatists as second only to [[Shakespeare]]; analysts recognise his extensive influence on generations of English-language playwrights. The word ''Shavian'' has entered the language as encapsulating Shaw's ideas and his means of expressing them.

==Life==
===Early years===
[[File:Dublin Portobello 33 Synge Street George Bernard Shaw Birthplace 2.JPG|thumb|upright|alt=Exterior of modest city house|Shaw's birthplace (2012 photograph). The plaque reads "Bernard Shaw, author of many plays, was born in this house, 26 July 1856".]]
Shaw was born at 3 Upper Synge Street{{refn|Now (2016) known as 33 Synge Street.{{sfn|Peters|1996|p=5}}|group=n}} in [[Portobello, Dublin|Portobello]], a lower-middle-class part of [[Dublin]].{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}} He was the youngest child and only son of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth (Bessie) Shaw (''née'' Gurly). His elder siblings were Lucinda (Lucy) Frances and Elinor Agnes. The Shaw family was of [[Anglo-Irish people|English descent]] and belonged to the dominant [[Protestant Ascendancy]] in Ireland;{{refn|Shaw's biographer [[Michael Holroyd]] records that in 1689 Captain William Shaw fought for [[William III of England|William III]] at the [[Battle of the Boyne]], for which service he was granted a substantial estate in [[Kilkenny]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=2}}|group=n}} George Carr Shaw, an ineffectual alcoholic, was among the family's less successful members.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=2}} His relatives secured him a [[sinecure]] in the civil service, from which he was pensioned off in the early 1850s; thereafter he worked irregularly as a corn merchant.{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}} In 1852 he married Bessie Gurly; in the view of Shaw's biographer [[Michael Holroyd]] she married to escape a tyrannical great-aunt.{{sfn|Shaw|1969|p=22}} If, as Holroyd and others surmise, George's motives were mercenary, then he was disappointed, as Bessie brought him little of her family's money.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=5–6}} She came to despise her ineffectual and often drunken husband, with whom she shared what their son later described as a life of "shabby-genteel poverty".{{sfn|Shaw|1969|p=22}}

By the time of Shaw's birth his mother had become close to George John Lee, a flamboyant figure well known in Dublin's musical circles. Shaw retained a lifelong obsession that Lee might have been his biological father;{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} there is no consensus among [[wikt:Shavian|Shavian]] scholars on the likelihood of this.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=13–14}}{{sfn|Rosset|1964|pp=105 and 129}}{{sfn|Dervin|1975|p=56}}{{sfn|O'Donovan|1965|p=108}} The young Shaw suffered no harshness from his mother, but he later recalled that her indifference and lack of affection hurt him deeply.{{sfn|Bosch|1984|pp=115–117}} He found solace in the music that abounded in the house. Lee was a conductor and teacher of singing; Bessie had a fine [[mezzo-soprano]] voice and was much influenced by Lee's unorthodox method of vocal production. The Shaws' house was often filled with music, with frequent gatherings of singers and players.{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}}

In 1862 Lee and the Shaws agreed to share a house, No. 1 Hatch Street, in an affluent part of Dublin, and a country cottage on [[Dalkey Hill]], overlooking [[Killiney Bay]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=27–28}} Shaw, a sensitive boy, found the less salubrious parts of Dublin shocking and distressing, and was happier at the cottage. Lee's students often gave him books, which the young Shaw read avidly;{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=23–24}} thus, as well as gaining a thorough musical knowledge of choral and operatic works, he became familiar with a wide spectrum of literature.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=24 (literature) and 25 (music)}}

Between 1865 and 1871 Shaw attended four schools, all of which he hated.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=19–21}}{{refn|The four schools were the [[Wesley College (Dublin)|Wesleyan Connexional School]], run by the [[Methodist Church in Ireland]]; a private school near [[Dalkey]]; Dublin Central Model Boys' School; and the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=19–21}}|group=n}} His experiences as a schoolboy left him disillusioned with formal education: "Schools and schoolmasters", he later wrote, were "prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents."{{sfn|Shaw|1949|pp=89–90}} In October 1871 he left school to become a junior clerk in a Dublin firm of [[land agent]]s, where he worked hard, and quickly rose to become head cashier.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} During this period, Shaw was known as "George Shaw"; after 1876, he dropped the "George" and styled himself "Bernard Shaw".{{refn|Shaw's loathing of the name George began in his childhood.{{sfn|Nothorcot|1964|p=3}} He never succeeded in persuading his mother and sister to stop calling him by the name, but he made it known that everyone else who had any respect for his wishes should refrain from using it—"I hate being George-d".{{sfn|Nothorcot|1964|pp=3–4 and 9}}|group=n}}

In June 1873 Lee left Dublin for London and never returned. A fortnight later, Bessie followed him; the two girls joined her.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}}{{refn|By Shaw's account, Lee left Ireland because he had outgrown the musical possibilities of Dublin; in fact, Lee had overreached himself by trying to oust [[Robert Prescott Stewart|Sir Robert Stewart]] as the city's leading conductor. Stewart, professor of music at [[Trinity College Dublin|Trinity College]], denounced him as a charlatan, and succeeded in driving him out.{{sfn|O'Donovan|1965|p=75}}|group=n}} Shaw's explanation of why his mother followed Lee was that without the latter's financial contribution the joint household had to be broken up.{{sfn|Westrup|1966|p=58}} Left in Dublin with his father, Shaw compensated for the absence of music in the house by teaching himself to play the piano.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}}

===London===
Early in 1876 Shaw learned from his mother that Agnes was dying of [[tuberculosis]]. He resigned from the land agents, and in March travelled to England to join his mother and Lucy at Agnes's funeral. He never again lived in Ireland, and did not visit it for twenty-nine years.{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}}

[[File:Bernard-Shaw-1879.jpg|thumb|left|upright|alt=young man with faint, wispy beard|Shaw in 1879]]

Initially, Shaw refused to seek clerical employment in London. His mother allowed him to live free of charge in her house in [[South Kensington]], but he nevertheless needed an income. He had abandoned a teenage ambition to become a painter, and had not yet thought of writing for a living, but Lee found a little work for him, [[ghost-writing]] a musical column printed under Lee's name in a satirical weekly, ''The Hornet''.{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}} Lee's relations with Bessie deteriorated after their move to London.{{refn|Shaw attributed the breach to Bessie's disillusion when Lee abandoned his distinctive teaching methods to pursue a cynically commercial exploitation of gullible pupils; others, including Holroyd, have suggested that Bessie was resentful that Lee's affections were turning elsewhere, not least to her daughter Lucy.{{sfn|Westrup|1966|p=58}}{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=40–41}}|group=n}} Shaw maintained contact with Lee, who found him work as a rehearsal pianist and occasional singer.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=40–41}}{{refn|Shaw had a passable [[baritone]] voice,{{sfn|Pharand|2000|p=24}} though he admitted that he was far outclassed as a singer by his sister Lucy, who had a career as a [[soprano]] with the [[Carl Rosa Opera Company|Carl Rosa]] and [[D'Oyly Carte Opera Company|D'Oyly Carte]] opera companies.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=25 and 68}}{{sfn|Rollins and Witts 1962|pp=54–55 and 58}}|group=n}}

Eventually Shaw was driven to applying for office jobs. In the interim he secured a reader's pass for the [[British Museum]] Reading Room (the forerunner of the [[British Library]]) and spent most weekdays there, reading and writing.{{sfn|Laurence|1976|p=8}} His first attempt at drama, begun in 1878, was a [[blank-verse]] satirical piece on a religious theme. It was abandoned unfinished, as was his first try at a novel. His first completed novel, ''Immaturity'' (1879), was too grim to appeal to publishers and did not appear until the 1930s.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} He was employed briefly by the newly formed Edison Telephone Company in 1879–80 and, as in Dublin, achieved rapid promotion. Nonetheless, when the [[National Telephone Company|Edison firm merged]] with the rival Bell Telephone Company, Shaw chose not to seek a place in the new organisation.{{sfn|Peters|1996|pp=56–57}} Thereafter he pursued a full-time career as an author.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=48}}

For the next four years Shaw made a negligible income from writing, and was subsidised by his mother.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=48–49}} In 1881, for the sake of economy, and increasingly as a matter of principle, he became a [[vegetarian]].{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} In the same year he suffered an attack of [[smallpox]]; eventually he grew a beard to hide the resultant facial scar.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=55–56}}{{refn|Vegetarianism and the luxuriant beard were among the things with which Shaw became associated by the general public. He was also a [[teetotaller]] and non-smoker, and was known for his habitual costume of unfashionable woollen clothes, made for him by [[Jaeger (clothing)|Jaeger]].{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}}{{sfn|Peters|1996|pp= 102–103}}{{sfn|Pearce|1997|p=127}}|group=n}} In rapid succession he wrote two more novels: ''The Irrational Knot'' (1880) and ''Love Among the Artists'' (1881), but neither found a publisher; each was [[Serial (literature)|serialised]] a few years later in the socialist magazine ''Our Corner''.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|p=120}}{{refn|''The Irrational Knot'' was eventually published in book form by Constable, in 1905;{{sfn|Rodenbeck|1969|p=67}} ''Love Among the Artists'' was first published as a book in 1900, by H. S. Stone of Chicago.{{sfn|''Love Among the Artists'': WorldCat}}|group=n}}

In 1880 Shaw began attending meetings of the Zetetical Society, whose objective was to "search for truth in all matters affecting the interests of the human race".{{sfn|Bevir|2011|p=155}} Here he met [[Sidney Webb]], a junior civil servant who, like Shaw, was busy educating himself. Despite difference of style and temperament, the two quickly recognised qualities in each other and developed a lifelong friendship. Shaw later reflected: "You knew everything that I didn't know and I knew everything you didn't know&nbsp;... We had everything to learn from one another and brains enough to do it".{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=172–173}}

[[File:William Archer.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=Victorian photograph of man in early middle age, with centre-parted hair and a walrus moustache|[[William Archer (critic)|William Archer]], colleague and benefactor of Shaw]]

Shaw's next attempt at drama was a one-act playlet in French, ''Un Petit Drame'', written in 1884 but not published in his lifetime.{{sfn|Pharand|2000|p=6}} In the same year the critic [[William Archer (critic)|William Archer]] suggested a collaboration, with a plot by Archer and dialogue by Shaw.{{sfn|Adams|1971|p=64}} The project foundered, but Shaw returned to the draft as the basis of ''[[Widowers' Houses]]'' in 1892,{{sfn|Yde|2013|p=46}} and the connection with Archer proved of immense value to Shaw's career.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=79}}

===Political awakening: Marxism, socialism, Fabian Society===
On 5 September 1882 Shaw attended a meeting at the Memorial Hall, [[Farringdon, London|Farringdon]], addressed by the political economist [[Henry George]].{{sfn|Pearson|1964|p=68}} Shaw then read George's book ''[[Progress and Poverty]]'', which awakened his interest in economics.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=127–128}} He began attending meetings of the [[Social Democratic Federation]] (SDF), where he discovered the writings of [[Karl Marx]], and thereafter spent much of 1883 reading ''[[Das Kapital]]''. He was not impressed by the SDF's founder, [[H. M. Hyndman]], whom he found autocratic, ill-tempered and lacking leadership qualities. Shaw doubted the ability of the SDF to harness the working classes into an effective radical movement and did not join it—he preferred, he said, to work with his intellectual equals.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=129–131}}

After reading a tract, ''Why Are The Many Poor?'', issued by the recently formed [[Fabian Society]],{{refn|The Fabian Society was founded in January 1884 as a splinter group from the [[Fellowship of the New Life]], a society of ethical [[History of the socialist movement in the United Kingdom|socialists]] founded in 1883 by [[Thomas Davidson (philosopher)|Thomas Davidson]].{{sfn|Diniejko|2013}}|group=n}} Shaw went to the society's next advertised meeting, on 16 May 1884.{{sfn|Cole|1961|pp=7–8}} He became a member in September,{{sfn|Cole|1961|pp=7–8}} and before the year's end had provided the society with its first manifesto, published as Fabian Tract No. 2.{{sfn|Fabian Tracts: 1884–1901}} He joined the society's executive committee in January 1885, and later that year recruited Webb and also [[Annie Besant]], a fine orator.{{sfn|Cole|1961|pp=7–8}}

{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=left|quote= "The most striking result of our present system of farming out the national Land and capital to private individuals has been the division of society into hostile classes, with large appetites and no dinners at one extreme, and large dinners and no appetites at the other"|salign = left|source= Shaw, Fabian Tract No. 2: ''A Manifesto'' (1884).{{sfn|Shaw: ''A Manifesto'' 1884}}}}

From 1885 to 1889 Shaw attended the fortnightly meetings of the [[Royal Economic Society|British Economic Association]]; it was, Holroyd observes, "the closest Shaw had ever come to university education". This experience changed his political ideas; he moved away from Marxism and became an apostle of [[Gradualism#Politics and society|gradualism]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=178–180}} When in 1886–87 the Fabians debated whether to embrace [[anarchism]], as advocated by [[Charlotte Wilson]], Besant and others, Shaw joined the majority in rejecting this approach.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=178–180}} After a rally in [[Trafalgar Square]] addressed by Besant was violently broken up by the authorities on 13 November 1887 ([[Bloody Sunday (1887)|"Bloody Sunday"]]), Shaw became convinced of the folly of attempting to challenge police power.{{sfn|Pelling|1965|p=50}} Thereafter he largely accepted the principle of "permeation" as advocated by Webb: the notion whereby socialism could best be achieved by infiltration of people and ideas into existing political parties.{{sfn|Preece|2011|p=53}}

Throughout the 1880s the Fabian Society remained small, its message of moderation frequently unheard among more strident voices.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=182–183}} Its profile was raised in 1889 with the publication of ''Fabian Essays in Socialism'', edited by Shaw who also provided two of the essays. The second of these, "Transition", details the case for gradualism and permeation, asserting that "the necessity for cautious and gradual change must be obvious to everyone".{{sfn|Shaw: ''Fabian Essays in Socialism'' 1889|pp=182–183}} In 1890 Shaw produced Tract No. 13, ''What Socialism Is'',{{sfn|Fabian Tracts: 1884–1901}} a revision of an earlier tract in which Charlotte Wilson had defined socialism in anarchistic terms.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|p=182}} In Shaw's new version, readers were assured that "socialism can be brought about in a perfectly constitutional manner by democratic institutions".{{sfn|Shaw: ''What Socialism Is'' 1890|p=3}}

===Novelist and critic===
The mid-1880s marked a turning point in Shaw's life, both personally and professionally: he lost his virginity, had two novels published, and began a career as a critic.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=72, 81 and 94}} He had been celibate until his twenty-ninth birthday, when his shyness was overcome by Jane (Jenny) Patterson, a widow some years his senior.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=92–94}} Their affair continued, not always smoothly, for eight years. Shaw's sex life has caused much speculation and debate among his biographers, but there is a consensus that the relationship with Patterson was one of his few non-platonic romantic liaisons.{{refn|Some writers, including Lisbeth J. Sachs, Bernard Stern and Sally Peters, believe Shaw was a repressed homosexual, and that after Jenny Patterson all his relationships with women, including his marriage, were platonic.{{sfn|Peters|1996|p=289}} Others, such as [[Maurice Valency]], suggest that at least one other of Shaw's relationships—that with [[Florence Farr]]—was consummated.{{sfn|Valency|1973|p=89}} Evidence came to light in 2004 that a well-documented relationship between the septuagenarian Shaw and the young actress Molly Tompkins was not, as had been generally supposed, platonic.{{sfn|Owen|2004|p=3}} Shaw himself stressed his own heterosexuality to [[St. John Greer Ervine|St John Ervine]] ("I am the normal heterosexual man") and [[Frank Harris]] ("I was not impotent: I was not sterile; I was not homosexual; and I was extremely, though not promiscuously, susceptible").{{sfn|Peters|1996|p=171}}|group=n}}

The published novels, neither commercially successful, were his two final efforts in this genre: ''Cashel Byron's Profession'' written in 1882–83, and ''An Unsocial Socialist'', begun and finished in 1883. The latter was published as a serial in ''To-Day'' magazine in 1884, although it did not appear in book form until 1887. ''Cashel Byron'' appeared in magazine and book form in 1886.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}}

[[File:William-Morris-John-Ruskin.jpg|thumb|alt=Two elderly, bushily bearded, Victorian men|[[William Morris]] (left) and [[John Ruskin]]: important influences on Shaw's aesthetic views]]

In 1884 and 1885, through the influence of Archer, Shaw was engaged to write book and music criticism for London papers. When Archer resigned as art critic of ''[[The World (journal)|The World]]'' in 1886, he secured the succession for Shaw.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=81–83}} The two figures in the contemporary art world whose views Shaw most admired were [[William Morris]] and [[John Ruskin]], and he sought to follow their precepts in his criticisms.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=81–83}} Their emphasis on morality appealed to Shaw, who rejected the idea of [[art for art's sake]], and insisted that all great art must be [[didactic]].{{sfn|Crawford|1982|pp=21 and 23}}

Of Shaw's various reviewing activities in the 1880s and 1890s it was as a music critic that he was best known.{{sfn|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 1) 1981|p=22}} After serving as deputy in 1888, he became musical critic of ''[[The Star (1888)|The Star]]'' in February 1889, writing under the pen-name Corno di Bassetto.{{sfn|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 1) 1981|pp=16–17}}{{refn|A corno di bassetto is the Italian name for an obsolete musical instrument, the [[basset horn]]. Shaw chose it as his pen name because he thought it seemed dashing: "it sounded like a foreign title and nobody knew what a corno di bassetto was". Only later did he hear one played, after which he declared it "a wretched instrument [of] peculiar watery melancholy.&nbsp;... The devil himself could not make a basset horn sparkle".{{sfn|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 1) 1981|pp=30–31}}|group=n}} In May 1890 he moved back to ''The World'', where he wrote a weekly column as "G.B.S." for more than four years. In the 2016 version of the ''[[Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians]]'', Robert Anderson writes, "Shaw's collected writings on music stand alone in their mastery of English and compulsive readability."{{sfn|Anderson: ''Grove Music Online''}} Shaw ceased to be a salaried music critic in August 1894, but published occasional articles on the subject throughout his career, his last in 1950.{{sfn|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 3) 1981|p=767}}

From 1895 to 1898, Shaw was the theatre critic for ''[[Saturday Review (London)|The Saturday Review]]'', edited by his friend [[Frank Harris]]. As at ''The World'', he used the by-line "G.B.S." He campaigned against the artificial conventions and hypocrisies of the [[Nineteenth-century theatre#Theatre in Britain|Victorian theatre]] and called for plays of real ideas and true characters. By this time he had embarked in earnest on a career as a playwright: "I had rashly taken up the case; and rather than let it collapse I manufactured the evidence".{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}}

===Playwright and politician: 1890s===
After using the plot of the aborted 1884 collaboration with Archer to complete ''Widowers' Houses'' (it was staged twice in London, in December 1892), Shaw continued writing plays. At first he made slow progress; ''[[The Philanderer]]'', written in 1893 but not published until 1898, had to wait until 1905 for a stage production. Similarly, ''[[Mrs Warren's Profession]]'' (1893) was written five years before publication and nine years before reaching the stage.{{refn|The first British production was at a private theatre club in 1902; the play was not licensed for public performance until 1925.{{sfn|''The Times'', 29 September 1925|p=12}}|group=n}}

[[File:Bernard-Shaw-1894.jpg|thumb|upright|left|alt=Man in early middle age, with full beard|Shaw in 1894 at the time of ''[[Arms and the Man]]'']]
Shaw's first play to bring him financial success was ''[[Arms and the Man]]'' (1894), a mock-[[Ruritania]]n comedy satirising conventions of love, military honour and class.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} The press found the play overlong, and accused Shaw of mediocrity,{{sfn|''The Standard'', 23 April 1894|p=2}} sneering at heroism and patriotism,{{sfn|''Fun'', 1 May 1894|p=179}} heartless cleverness,{{sfn|''The Observer'', 22 April 1894|p=5}} and copying [[W. S. Gilbert|W.{{space}}S.{{space}}Gilbert]]'s style.{{sfn|''The Standard'', 23 April 1894|p=2}}{{refn|Shaw was sensitive to the charge of emulating Gilbert. He insisted that it was Gilbert who was heartless, while he himself was constructive.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=172–173}}|group=n}} The public took a different view, and the management of the theatre staged extra matinée performances to meet the demand.{{sfn|''The Sporting Times'', 19 May 1894|p=3}} The play ran from April to July, toured the provinces and was staged in New York.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=172–173}} It earned him £341 in royalties in its first year, a sufficient sum to enable him to give up his salaried post as a music critic.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=173}} Among the cast of the London production was [[Florence Farr]], with whom Shaw had a romantic relationship between 1890 and 1894, much resented by Jenny Patterson.{{sfn|Peters|1998|pp=138 and 210}}

The success of ''Arms and the Man'' was not immediately replicated. ''[[Candida (play)|Candida]]'', which presented a young woman making a conventional romantic choice for unconventional reasons, received a single performance in [[South Shields]] in 1895;{{sfn|''The Daily News'', 1 April 1895|p=2}} in 1897 a playlet about Napoleon called ''[[The Man of Destiny]]'' had a single staging at [[Croydon]].{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=75–78}} In the 1890s Shaw's plays were better known in print than on the [[West End theatre|West End]] stage; his biggest success of the decade was in New York in 1897, when [[Richard Mansfield]]'s production of the historical melodrama ''[[The Devil's Disciple (play)|The Devil's Disciple]]'' earned the author more than £2,000 in royalties.{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}}

In January 1893, as a Fabian delegate, Shaw attended the Bradford conference which led to the foundation of the [[Independent Labour Party]].{{sfn|Pelling|1965|pp=115–116}} He was sceptical about the new party,{{sfn|Adelman|1996|p=22}} and scorned the likelihood that it could switch the allegiance of the working class from sport to politics.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=270–272}} He persuaded the conference to adopt resolutions abolishing [[indirect taxation]], and taxing [[unearned income]] "to extinction".{{sfn|Pelling|1965|pp=119–120}} Back in London, Shaw produced what [[Margaret Cole]], in her Fabian history, terms a "grand philippic" against the minority [[Liberal government 1892–95|Liberal administration]] that had taken power in 1892. ''To Your Tents, O Israel!'' excoriated the government for ignoring social issues and concentrating solely on [[Irish Home Rule movement|Irish Home Rule]], a matter Shaw declared of no relevance to socialism.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=270–272}}{{sfn|Cole|1961|pp=46–48}}{{refn|With [[1895 United Kingdom general election|another election]] looming in 1895, the text of ''To Your Tents'' was modified, to become Fabian Tract No. 49, ''A Plan of Campaign For Labor''.{{sfn|Fabian Tracts: 1884–1901}}{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=270–272}}|group=n}} In 1894 the Fabian Society received a substantial bequest from a sympathiser, Henry Hunt Hutchinson—Holroyd mentions £10,000. Webb, who chaired the board of trustees appointed to supervise the legacy, proposed to use most of it to found a school of economics and politics. Shaw demurred; he thought such a venture was contrary to the specified purpose of the legacy. He was eventually persuaded to support the proposal, and the [[London School of Economics and Political Science]] (LSE) opened in the summer of 1895.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=409–411}}

By the later 1890s Shaw's political activities lessened as he concentrated on making his name as a dramatist.{{sfn|Pelling|1965|p=184}} In 1897 he was persuaded to fill an uncontested vacancy for a "vestryman" ([[Parish councils in England|parish councillor]]) in London's [[St Pancras, London|St Pancras]] district. At least initially, Shaw took to his municipal responsibilities seriously;{{refn|Shaw served on the vestry's Health Committee, the Officers Committee and the Committee for Public Lighting.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|p=414}}|group=n}} when London government was reformed in 1899 and the St Pancras vestry became the [[Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras]], he was elected to the newly formed borough council.{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|p=416}}

In 1898, as a result of overwork, Shaw's health broke down. He was nursed by [[Charlotte Payne-Townshend]], a rich Anglo-Irish woman whom he had met through the Webbs. The previous year she had proposed that she and Shaw should marry.{{sfn|Holroyd| 1997|p=249}} He had declined, but when she insisted on nursing him in a house in the country, Shaw, concerned that this might cause scandal, agreed to their marriage.{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}} The ceremony took place on 1 June 1898, in the [[register office]] in [[Covent Garden]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=263}} The bride and bridegroom were both aged forty-one. In the view of the biographer and critic [[St John Greer Ervine|St John Ervine]], "their life together was entirely felicitous".{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}} There were no children of the marriage, which it is generally believed was never consummated; whether this was wholly at Charlotte's wish, as Shaw liked to suggest, is less widely credited.{{sfn|Adams|1971|p=154}}{{sfn|Carr|1976|p=10}}{{sfn|Peters|1996|p=218}}{{sfn|Weintraub|1982|p=4}}{{sfn|Crawford|1975|p=93}} In the early weeks of the marriage Shaw was much occupied writing his Marxist analysis of [[Richard Wagner|Wagner]]'s [[Der Ring des Nibelungen|''Ring'' cycle]], published as ''[[The Perfect Wagnerite]]'' late in 1898.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=11–13}} In 1906 the Shaws found a country home in [[Ayot St Lawrence]], Hertfordshire; they renamed the house "[[Shaw's Corner]]", and lived there for the rest of their lives. They retained a London flat in the [[Adelphi Terrace|Adelphi]] and later at [[Whitehall Court]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=261, 356 and 786}}

===Stage success: 1900–1914===
[[File:Caesar-and-Cleopatra-1906.jpg|thumb|alt=Stage photograph showing actor as Julius Caesar and actress as Cleopatra in Egyptian setting|Gertrude Elliott and [[Johnston Forbes-Robertson]] in ''[[Caesar and Cleopatra (play)|Caesar and Cleopatra]]'', New York, 1906]]
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Shaw secured a firm reputation as a playwright. In 1904 [[John Eugene Vedrenne|J. E. Vedrenne]] and [[Harley Granville-Barker]] established a company at the [[Royal Court Theatre]] in [[Sloane Square]], [[Chelsea, London|Chelsea]] to present modern drama. Over the next five years they staged fourteen of Shaw's plays.{{sfn|''The Observer'', 8 March 1908|p=8}}{{refn|At the Royal Court and then at the [[Savoy Theatre|Savoy]], the Shaw plays presented by the partnership between 1905 and 1908 were ''[[You Never Can Tell (play)|You Never Can Tell]]'' (177 performances), ''[[Man and Superman]]'' (176), ''[[John Bull's Other Island]]'' (121), ''[[Captain Brassbound's Conversion]]'' (89), ''[[Arms and the Man]]'' (77), ''[[Major Barbara]]'' (52), ''[[The Doctor's Dilemma (play)|The Doctor's Dilemma]]'' (50), ''[[The Devil's Disciple (play)|The Devil's Disciple]]'' (42), ''[[Candida (play)|Candida]]'' (31), ''[[Caesar and Cleopatra (play)|Caesar and Cleopatra]]'' (28), ''[[How He Lied to Her Husband]]'' (9), ''[[The Philanderer]]'' (8), ''[[Don Juan in Hell]]'' (8) and ''[[The Man of Destiny]]'' (8).{{sfn|''The Observer'', 8 March 1908|p=8}}|group=n}} The first, ''[[John Bull's Other Island]]'', a comedy about an Englishman in Ireland, attracted leading politicians and was seen by [[Edward VII]], who laughed so much that he broke his chair.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=311}} The play was withheld from Dublin's [[Abbey Theatre]], for fear of the affront it might provoke,{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} although it was shown at the city's Royal Theatre in November 1907.{{sfn|Merriman|2010|pp=219–20}} Shaw later wrote that [[William Butler Yeats]], who had requested the play, "got rather more than he bargained for{{space}}... It was uncongenial to the whole spirit of the neo-Gaelic movement, which is bent on creating a new Ireland after its own ideal, whereas my play is a very uncompromising presentment of the real old Ireland."{{sfn|Broad and Broad 1929|p=53}}{{refn|Shaw often mocked the pretensions of the [[Gaelic League]] to represent modern-day Ireland—the League had, he said, been "invented in [[Bedford Park, London]]."{{sfn|Shaw|1998|p=64}} In a 1950 study of the [[Abbey Theatre]], Peter Kavanagh wrote: "Yeats and [[J. M. Synge|Synge]] did not feel that Shaw belonged to the real Irish tradition. His plays would thus have no place in the Irish theatre movement". Kavanagh added, "an important part of Shaw's plays was political argument, and Yeats detested this quality in dramatic writing."{{sfn|Kavanagh|1950| p= 55}}|group=n}} Nonetheless, Shaw and Yeats were close friends; Yeats and [[Augusta, Lady Gregory|Lady Gregory]] tried unsuccessfully to persuade Shaw to take up the vacant co-directorship of the Abbey Theatre after [[J. M. Synge]]'s death in 1909.{{sfn|Gahan|2010|pp=10–11}} Shaw admired other figures in the [[Irish Literary Revival]], including [[George William Russell|George Russell]]{{sfn|Gahan|2010|p=8}} and [[James Joyce]],{{sfn|Gahan|2010|p=14}} and was a close friend of [[Seán O'Casey]], who was inspired to become a playwright after reading ''John Bull's Other Island''.{{sfn|Gahan|2010|p=1}}

''[[Man and Superman]]'', completed in 1902, was a success both at the Royal Court in 1905 and in [[Robert Loraine]]'s New York production in the same year. Among the other Shaw works presented by Vedrenne and Granville-Barker were ''[[Major Barbara]]'' (1905), depicting the contrasting morality of arms manufacturers and the [[Salvation Army]];{{sfn|''The Observer'', 3 December 1905|p=5}} ''[[The Doctor's Dilemma (play)|The Doctor's Dilemma]]'' (1906), a mostly serious piece about professional ethics;{{sfn|''The Manchester Guardian'', 21 November 1906|p=7}} and ''[[Caesar and Cleopatra (play)|Caesar and Cleopatra]]'', Shaw's counterblast to Shakespeare's ''[[Antony and Cleopatra]]'', seen in New York in 1906 and in London the following year.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=217}}

Now prosperous and established, Shaw experimented with unorthodox theatrical forms described by his biographer [[Stanley Weintraub]] as "discussion drama" and "serious [[farce]]".{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} These plays included ''[[Getting Married]]'' (premiered 1908), ''[[The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet]]'' (1909), ''[[Misalliance (play)|Misalliance]]'' (1910), and ''[[Fanny's First Play]]'' (1911). ''Blanco Posnet'' was banned on religious grounds by the [[Lord Chamberlain#Theatre censorship|Lord Chamberlain]] (the official theatre censor in England), and was produced instead in Dublin; it filled the Abbey Theatre to capacity.{{sfn|Laurence|1955|p=8}} ''Fanny's First Play'', a comedy about [[suffragette]]s, had the longest initial run of any Shaw play—622 performances.{{sfn|Gaye|1967|p=1531}}

''[[Androcles and the Lion (play)|Androcles and the Lion]]'' (1912), a less heretical study of true and false religious attitudes than ''Blanco Posnet'', ran for eight weeks in September and October 1913.{{sfn|Wearing|1982|p=379}} It was followed by one of Shaw's most successful plays, ''[[Pygmalion (play)|Pygmalion]]'', written in 1912 and staged in Vienna the following year, and in Berlin shortly afterwards.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=440}} Shaw commented, "It is the custom of the English press when a play of mine is produced, to inform the world that it is not a play—that it is dull, blasphemous, unpopular, and financially unsuccessful.&nbsp;... Hence arose an urgent demand on the part of the managers of Vienna and Berlin that I should have my plays performed by them first."{{sfn|''The New York Times'', 23 November 1913|p=X6}} The British production opened in April 1914, starring [[Herbert Beerbohm Tree|Sir Herbert Tree]] and [[Mrs Patrick Campbell]] as, respectively, a professor of phonetics and a [[cockney]] flower-girl. There had earlier been a romantic liaison between Shaw and Campbell that caused Charlotte Shaw considerable concern, but by the time of the London premiere it had ended.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=426–430}} The play attracted capacity audiences until July, when Tree insisted on going on holiday, and the production closed. His co-star then toured with the piece in the US.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp= 443–444}}{{sfn|''The New York Times'', 10 October 1914}}{{refn|In Tree's absence from the American production, his role, Professor Higgins, was successfully taken by [[Philip Merivale]], who had played Colonel Pickering in London.{{sfn|''The New York Times'', 13 October 1914}} Campbell continued to romanticise the piece, contrary to Shaw's wishes.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=443–444}}|group=n}}

===Fabian years: 1900–1913===
[[File:George Bernard Shaw notebook.jpg|thumb|upright|left|alt=Man in late middle age, with full head of hair, full beard, and combative facial expression|Shaw in 1914, aged 57]]
In 1899, when the [[Second Boer War|Boer War]] began, Shaw wished the Fabians to take a neutral stance on what he deemed, like [[Irish Home Rule movement|Home Rule]], to be a "non-Socialist" issue. Others, including the future Labour prime minister [[Ramsay MacDonald]], wanted unequivocal opposition, and resigned from the society when it followed Shaw.{{sfn|Pelling|1965|pp=187–188}} In the Fabians' war manifesto, ''Fabianism and the Empire'' (1900), Shaw declared that "until the Federation of the World becomes an accomplished fact we must accept the most responsible Imperial federations available as a substitute for it".{{sfn|Shaw: ''Fabianism and the Empire'' 1900|p=24}}

As the new century began, Shaw became increasingly disillusioned by the limited impact of the Fabians on national politics.{{sfn|McBriar|1962|p=83}} Thus, although a nominated Fabian delegate, he did not attend the London conference at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street in February 1900, that created the [[Labour Representation Committee (1900)|Labour Representation Committee]]—precursor of the modern [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]].{{sfn|Cole|1961|p=90}} By 1903, when his term as borough councillor expired, he had lost his earlier enthusiasm, writing: "After six years of Borough Councilling I am convinced that the borough councils should be abolished".{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=46–47}} Nevertheless, in 1904 he stood in the [[London County Council]] elections. After an eccentric campaign, which Holroyd characterises as "[making] absolutely certain of not getting in", he was duly defeated. It was Shaw's final foray into electoral politics.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=46–47}} Nationally, the [[1906 United Kingdom general election|1906 general election]] produced a huge Liberal majority and an intake of 29 Labour members. Shaw viewed this outcome with scepticism; he had a low opinion of the new prime minister, [[Henry Campbell-Bannerman|Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman]], and saw the Labour members as inconsequential: "I apologise to the Universe for my connection with such a body".{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=125–126}}

In the years after the 1906 election, Shaw felt that the Fabians needed fresh leadership, and saw this in the form of his fellow-writer [[H. G. Wells]], who had joined the society in February 1903.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=129–133}} Wells's ideas for reform—particularly his proposals for closer cooperation with the Independent Labour Party—placed him at odds with the society's "Old Gang", led by Shaw.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=142–145}} According to Cole, Wells "had minimal capacity for putting [his ideas] across in public meetings against Shaw's trained and practised virtuosity".{{sfn|Cole|1961|p=123}} In Shaw's view, "the Old Gang did not extinguish Mr Wells, he annihilated himself".{{sfn|Cole|1961|p=123}} Wells resigned from the society in September 1908;{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|p=259}} Shaw remained a member, but left the executive in April 1911. He later wondered whether the Old Gang should have given way to Wells some years earlier: "God only knows whether the Society had not better have done it".{{sfn|Cole|1961|p=144}}{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=267–268}} Although less active—he blamed his advancing years—Shaw remained a Fabian.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|p=318}}

In 1912 Shaw invested £1,000 for a one-fifth share in the Webbs' new publishing venture, a socialist weekly magazine called ''[[New Statesman|The New Statesman]]'', which appeared in April 1913. He became a founding director, publicist, and in due course a contributor, mostly anonymously.{{sfn|Smith|2013|pp=38–42}} He was soon at odds with the magazine's editor, [[Clifford Sharp]], who by 1916 was rejecting his contributions—"the only paper in the world that refuses to print anything by me", according to Shaw.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=319–321}}

===First World War===
{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote="I see the Junkers and Militarists of England and Germany jumping at the chance they have longed for in vain for many years of smashing one another and establishing their own oligarchy as the dominant military power of the world."|salign=left|source=Shaw: ''Common Sense About the War'' (1914).{{sfn|Shaw: ''Common Sense About the War'' 1914|p=12}}}}
After the First World War began in August 1914, Shaw produced his tract ''Common Sense About the War'', which argued that the warring nations were equally culpable.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} Such a view was anathema in an atmosphere of fervent patriotism, and offended many of Shaw's friends; Ervine records that "[h]is appearance at any public function caused the instant departure of many of those present."{{sfn|Ervine|1956|p=464}}

Despite his errant reputation, Shaw's propagandist skills were recognised by the British authorities, and early in 1917 he was invited by [[Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig|Field Marshal Haig]] to visit the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]] battlefields. Shaw's 10,000-word report, which emphasised the human aspects of the soldier's life, was well received, and he became less of a lone voice. In April 1917 he joined the national consensus in welcoming [[United States in World War I|America's entry]] into the war: "a first class moral asset to the common cause against [[Junker (Prussia)|junkerism]]".{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=371–374}}

Three short plays by Shaw were premiered during the war. ''[[The Inca of Perusalem]]'', written in 1915, encountered problems with the censor for burlesquing not only the enemy but the British military command; it was performed in 1916 at the [[Birmingham Repertory Theatre]].{{sfn|Evans|2003|p=110}} ''[[O'Flaherty V.C.]]'', satirising the government's attitude to Irish recruits, was banned in the UK and was presented at a [[Royal Flying Corps]] base in Belgium in 1917. ''[[Augustus Does His Bit]]'', a genial farce, was granted a licence; it opened at the Royal Court in January 1917.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=112–113}}

===Ireland===
[[File:Sackville Street (Dublin) after the 1916 Easter Rising.JPG|thumb|alt=Cityscape of badly damaged large buildings|left|Dublin city centre in ruins after the Easter Rising, April 1916]]
Shaw had long supported the principle of Irish Home Rule within the [[British Empire]] (which he thought should become the British Commonwealth).{{sfn|Clare|2016|p=176}} In April 1916 he wrote scathingly in ''[[The New York Times]]'' about militant Irish nationalism: "In point of learning nothing and forgetting nothing these fellow-patriots of mine leave the Bourbons nowhere."{{sfn|Shaw: "Irish Nonsense About Ireland" 1916}} Total independence, he asserted, was impractical; alliance with a bigger power (preferably England) was essential.{{sfn|Shaw: "Irish Nonsense About Ireland" 1916}} The Dublin [[Easter Rising]] later that month took him by surprise. After its suppression by British forces, he expressed horror at the [[summary execution]] of the rebel leaders, but continued to believe in some form of Anglo-Irish union. In ''How to Settle the Irish Question'' (1917), he envisaged a federal arrangement, with national and imperial parliaments. Holroyd records that by this time the separatist party [[Sinn Féin]] was in the ascendency, and Shaw's and other moderate schemes were forgotten.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=390–391}}

In the postwar period, Shaw despaired of the British government's coercive policies towards Ireland,{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=60}} and joined his fellow-writers [[Hilaire Belloc]] and [[G. K. Chesterton]] in publicly condemning these actions.{{sfn|Bennett|2010|p=60}} The [[Anglo-Irish Treaty]] of December 1921 led to the [[partition of Ireland]] between north and south, a provision that dismayed Shaw.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=60}} In 1922 [[Irish Civil War|civil war]] broke out in the south between its pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions, the former of whom had established the [[Irish Free State]].{{sfn|Mackay|1997|pp=251–254}} Shaw visited Dublin in August, and met [[Michael Collins (Irish leader)|Michael Collins]], then head of the Free State's [[Provisional Government of Ireland (1922)|Provisional Government]].{{sfn|Mackay|1997|p=280}} Shaw was much impressed by Collins, and was saddened when, three days later, the Irish leader was ambushed and killed by anti-treaty forces.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=62}} In a letter to Collins's sister, Shaw wrote: "I met Michael for the first and last time on Saturday last, and am very glad I did. I rejoice in his memory, and will not be so disloyal to it as to snivel over his valiant death".{{sfn|Mackay|1997|pp=296–297}} Shaw remained a British subject all his life, but took dual British-Irish nationality in 1934.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|p=384}}

===1920s===
[[File:Shaw's writing hut.jpg|thumb|right|upright|alt=Garden hut in well-kept surroundings|The rotating hut in the garden of Shaw's Corner, [[Ayot St Lawrence]], where Shaw wrote most of his works after 1906]]
Shaw's first major work to appear after the war was ''[[Heartbreak House]]'', written in 1916–17 and performed in 1920. It was produced on [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] in November, and was coolly received; according to ''The Times''<!--Is this The New York Times? NO: JUST THE TIMES, AS THE CITATION CONFIRMS – THAT IS THE PAPER’S FULL TITLE; THE NYT AND TIMES OF INDIA ETC ARE DERIVATIVES-->: "Mr Shaw on this occasion has more than usual to say and takes twice as long as usual to say it".{{sfn|''The Times'', 12 November 1920|p=11}} After the London premiere in October 1921 ''The Times'' concurred with the American critics: "As usual with Mr Shaw, the play is about an hour too long", although containing "much entertainment and some profitable reflection".{{sfn|''The Times'', 19 October 1921|p=8}} Ervine in ''The Observer'' thought the play brilliant but ponderously acted, except for [[Edith Evans]] as Lady Utterword.{{sfn|Ervine|1921|p=11}}

Shaw's largest-scale theatrical work was ''[[Back to Methuselah]]'', written in 1918–20 and staged in 1922. Weintraub describes it as "Shaw's attempt to fend off 'the bottomless pit of an utterly discouraging pessimism'".{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} This cycle of five interrelated plays depicts evolution, and the effects of longevity, from the Garden of Eden to the year 31,920 AD.{{sfn|Shaw|1934|pp=855, 869, 891, 910–911, 938}} Critics found the five plays strikingly uneven in quality and invention.{{sfn|Ervine|1923|p=11}}{{sfn|''The Times'', 15 October 1923|p=11}}{{sfn|Rhodes|1923|p=8}} The original run was brief, and the work has been revived infrequently.{{sfn|Gaye|1967|p=1357}}{{sfn|Drabble ''et al.'' 2007 "Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch"}} Shaw felt he had exhausted his remaining creative powers in the huge span of this "Metabiological Pentateuch". He was now sixty-seven, and expected to write no more plays.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}}

This mood was short-lived. In 1920 [[Joan of Arc]] was proclaimed a [[Catholic saint|saint]] by [[Pope Benedict XV]]; Shaw had long found Joan an interesting historical character, and his view of her veered between "half-witted genius" and someone of "exceptional sanity".{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=520}} He had considered writing a play about her in 1913, and the [[canonisation]] prompted him to return to the subject.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} He wrote ''[[Saint Joan (play)|Saint Joan]]'' in the middle months of 1923, and the play was premiered on Broadway in December. It was enthusiastically received there,{{sfn|''The Times'', 9 December 1923|p=8}} and at its London premiere the following March.{{sfn|''The Times'', 27 March 1924|p=12}} In Weintraub's phrase, "even the Nobel prize committee could no longer ignore Shaw after Saint Joan". The citation for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature|literature prize]] for 1925 praised his work as "...&nbsp;marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty".{{sfn|The Nobel Prize in Literature 1925}} He accepted the award, but rejected the monetary prize that went with it, on the grounds that "My readers and my audiences provide me with more than sufficient money for my needs".{{sfn| Quoted in Kamm 1999|p=74}}{{refn|Shaw had been considered and rejected for a Nobel Prize four or five times before this.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=530}} He arranged for the prize money to be used to sponsor a new [[Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation]], for the translation into English of Swedish literature, including [[August Strindberg]]'s plays.{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}}|group=n}}

After ''Saint Joan'', it was five years before Shaw wrote a play. From 1924, he spent four years writing what he described as his "magnum opus", a political treatise entitled ''[[The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism]]''.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|pp=128–131}} The book was published in 1928 and sold well.{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}}{{refn|In 1937 the book was reissued, with additional chapters and an extended title, ''The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism'', and was published by [[Penguin Books]] as the first in the new paperback series called [[Pelican Books|Pelicans]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=373}}|group=n}} At the end of the decade Shaw produced his final Fabian tract, a commentary on the [[League of Nations]]. He described the League as "a school for the new international statesmanship as against the old Foreign Office diplomacy", but thought that it had not yet become the "Federation of the World".{{sfn|Shaw: ''The League of Nations'' 1929|pp=6 and 11}}

Shaw returned to the theatre with what he called "a political extravaganza", ''[[The Apple Cart]]'', written in late 1928. It was, in Ervine's view, unexpectedly popular, taking a conservative, monarchist, anti-democratic line that appealed to contemporary audiences. The premiere was in Warsaw in June 1928, and the first British production was two months later, at [[Barry Jackson (director)|Sir Barry Jackson]]'s inaugural [[The Malvern Festival (1929-1939)|Malvern Festival]].{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}} The other eminent creative artist most closely associated with the festival was [[Edward Elgar|Sir Edward Elgar]], with whom Shaw enjoyed a deep friendship and mutual regard.{{sfn|Young|1973|p=240}} He described ''The Apple Cart'' to Elgar as "a scandalous Aristophanic burlesque of democratic politics, with a brief but shocking sex interlude".{{sfn|Weintraub|2002|p=7}}

During the 1920s Shaw began to lose faith in the idea that society could be changed through Fabian gradualism, and became increasingly fascinated with dictatorial methods. In 1922 he had welcomed [[Benito Mussolini|Mussolini]]'s accession to power in Italy, observing that amid the "indiscipline and muddle and Parliamentary deadlock", Mussolini was "the right kind of tyrant".{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=143}} Shaw was prepared to tolerate certain dictatorial excesses; Weintraub in his [[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|ODNB]] biographical sketch comments that Shaw's "flirtation with authoritarian inter-war regimes" took a long time to fade, and [[Beatrice Webb]] thought he was "obsessed" about Mussolini.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=146}}

===1930s===
{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=left|quote="We the undersigned are recent visitors to the USSR&nbsp;... We desire to record that we saw nowhere evidence of economic slavery, privation, unemployment and cynical despair of betterment.&nbsp;... Everywhere we saw [a] hopeful and enthusiastic working-class&nbsp;... setting an example of industry and conduct which would greatly enrich us if our systems supplied our workers with any incentive to follow it."|salign=left|source= Letter to ''The Manchester Guardian'', 2 March 1933, signed by Shaw and 20 others.{{sfn|Shaw et al.: "Social Conditions in Russia", 2 March 1933}}}}
Shaw's enthusiasm for the [[Soviet Union]] dated to the early 1920s when he had hailed [[Lenin]] as "the one really interesting statesman in Europe".{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=226}} Having turned down several chances to visit, in 1931 he joined a party led by [[Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor|Nancy Astor]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|pp=233–234}} The carefully managed trip culminated in a lengthy meeting with [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]], whom Shaw later described as "a Georgian<!--Was he referring to Stalin's native Georgian SSR, or to George V? Useful to distinguish.--> gentleman" with no malice in him.{{sfn|Weintraub: "GBS and the Despots", 22 August 2011}} At a dinner given in his honour, Shaw told the gathering: "I have seen all the 'terrors' and I was terribly pleased by them".{{sfn|Nestruck|2011}} In March 1933, he was a co-signatory to a letter in ''[[The Manchester Guardian]]'' protesting at the continuing misrepresentation of Soviet achievements: "No lie is too fantastic, no slander is too stale&nbsp;... for employment by the more reckless elements of the British press."{{sfn|Shaw et al.: "Social Conditions in Russia", 2 March 1933}}

Shaw's admiration for Mussolini and Stalin demonstrated his growing belief that dictatorship was the only viable political arrangement. When the [[Nazi Party]] came to power in Germany in January 1933, Shaw described [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] as "a very remarkable man, a very able man",{{sfn|Geduld|1961|pp=11–12}} and professed himself proud to be the only writer in England who was "scrupulously polite and just to Hitler";{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=421}}{{refn|Shaw was not alone in being initially deceived by Hitler. The former British prime minister [[David Lloyd George]] described the Führer in 1936 as "unquestionably a great leader".{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=404}} A year later the former Labour Party leader [[George Lansbury]] recorded that Hitler "could listen to reason", and that "Christianity in its purest sense might have a chance with him".{{sfn|Shepherd|2002|p=341}}|group=n}} though his principal admiration was for Stalin, whose regime he championed uncritically throughout the decade.{{sfn|Nestruck|2011}} Shaw saw the 1939 [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]] as a triumph for Stalin who, he said, now had Hitler under his thumb.{{sfn|Geduld|1961|pp=15–16}}

Shaw's first play of the decade was ''[[Too True to Be Good]]'', written in 1931 and premiered in [[Boston]] in February 1932. The reception was unenthusiastic. [[Brooks Atkinson]] of ''The New York Times'' commenting that Shaw had "yielded to the impulse to write without having a subject", judged the play a "rambling and indifferently tedious conversation". The correspondent of the ''[[New York Herald Tribune]]'' said that most of the play was "discourse, unbelievably long lectures" and that although the audience enjoyed the play it was bewildered by it.{{sfn|''The Manchester Guardian'', 2 March 1932|p=12}}

[[File:George Bernard Shaw 1936.jpg|thumb|Shaw in 1936, aged 80]]

During the decade Shaw travelled widely and frequently. Most of his journeys were with Charlotte; she enjoyed voyages on ocean liners, and he found peace to write during the long spells at sea.{{sfn|Laurence|1985|pp=279–282}} Shaw met an enthusiastic welcome in [[Union of South Africa|South Africa]] in 1932, despite his strong remarks about the racial divisions of the country.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=640–642}} In December 1932 the couple embarked on a round-the-world cruise. In March 1933 they arrived at [[San Francisco]], to begin Shaw's first visit to the US. He had earlier refused to go to "that awful country, that uncivilized place", "unfit to govern itself{{space}}... illiberal, superstitious, crude, violent, anarchic and arbitrary".{{sfn|Laurence|1985|pp=279–282}} He visited [[Hollywood, Los Angeles|Hollywood]], with which he was unimpressed, and New York, where he lectured to a capacity audience in the [[Metropolitan Opera House (39th Street)|Metropolitan Opera House]].{{sfn|Laurence|1985|p=288}} Harried by the intrusive attentions of the press, Shaw was glad when his ship sailed from [[New York Harbor|New York harbour]].{{sfn|Laurence|1985|p=292}} New Zealand, which he and Charlotte visited the following year, struck him as "the best country I've been in"; he urged its people to be more confident and loosen their dependence on trade with Britain.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=668 and 670}} He used the weeks at sea to complete two plays—''[[The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles]]'' and ''[[The Six of Calais]]''—and begin work on a third, ''[[The Millionairess (play)|The Millionairess]]''.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=667}}

Despite his contempt for Hollywood and its aesthetic values, Shaw was enthusiastic about cinema, and in the middle of the decade wrote screenplays for prospective film versions of ''Pygmalion'' and ''Saint Joan''.{{sfn|Laurence|1985|p=285}}{{sfn|Weales|1969|p=80}} The latter was never made, but Shaw entrusted the rights to the former to the unknown [[Gabriel Pascal]], who produced it at [[Pinewood Studios]] in 1938. Shaw was determined that Hollywood should have nothing to do with the film, but was powerless to keep it from winning one [[Academy Award]] ("Oscar"); he described his award for "best-written screenplay" as an insult, coming from such a source.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=715}}{{refn|This did not prevent him from putting the award—a golden figurine—on his mantelpiece.{{sfn|Pascal|1971|p=86}} Shaw was one of four to receive the award, along with [[Ian Dalrymple]], [[Cecil Arthur Lewis|Cecil Lewis]] and [[W. P. Lipscomb]], who had also worked on adapting Shaw's text.{{sfn|Burton and Chibnall 2013|p=715}}|group=n}} He became the first person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar.{{sfn|Peters|1998|p=257}} In a 1993 study of the Oscars, [[Anthony Holden]] observes that ''Pygmalion'' was soon spoken of as having "lifted movie-making from illiteracy to literacy".{{sfn|Holden|1993|p=141}}

Shaw's final plays of the 1930s were ''[[Cymbeline Refinished]]'' (1936), ''[[Geneva (play)|Geneva]]'' (1936) and ''[[In Good King Charles's Golden Days]]'' (1939). The first, a fantasy reworking of Shakespeare, made little impression, but the second, a satire on European dictators, attracted more notice, much of it unfavourable.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=718 and 724}} In particular, Shaw's parody of Hitler as "Herr Battler" was considered mild, almost sympathetic.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=404}}{{sfn|Geduld|1961|pp=15–16}} The third play, an historical conversation piece first seen at Malvern, ran briefly in London in May 1940.{{sfn|Evans|1976|p=360}} [[James Agate]] commented that the play contained nothing to which even the most conservative audiences could take exception, and though it was long and lacking in dramatic action only "witless and idle" theatregoers would object.{{sfn|Evans|1976|p=360}} After their first runs none of the three plays were seen again in the West End during Shaw's lifetime.{{sfn|Gaye|1967|pp=1391 and 1406}}

Towards the end of the decade, both Shaws began to suffer ill health. Charlotte was increasingly incapacitated by [[Paget's disease of bone]], and he developed [[pernicious anaemia]]. His treatment, involving injections of concentrated animal liver, was successful, but this breach of his vegetarian creed distressed him and brought down condemnation from militant vegetarians.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=698 and 747}}

===Second World War and final years===
Although Shaw's works since ''The Apple Cart'' had been received without great enthusiasm, his earlier plays were revived in the West End throughout the Second World War, starring such actors as Edith Evans, [[John Gielgud]], [[Deborah Kerr]] and [[Robert Donat]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=737}} In 1944 nine Shaw plays were staged in London, including ''Arms and the Man'' with [[Ralph Richardson]], [[Laurence Olivier]], [[Sybil Thorndike]] and [[Margaret Leighton]] in the leading roles. Two touring companies took his plays all round Britain.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=737–738}} The revival in his popularity did not tempt Shaw to write a new play, and he concentrated on prolific journalism.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=738}} A second Shaw film produced by Pascal, ''[[Major Barbara (film)|Major Barbara]]'' (1941), was less successful both artistically and commercially than ''Pygmalion'', partly because of Pascal's insistence on directing, to which he was unsuited.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=742–743}}

{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote= "The rest of Shaw's life was quiet and solitary. The loss of his wife was more profoundly felt than he had ever imagined any loss could be: for he prided himself on a stoical fortitude in all loss and misfortune."|salign=left|source= St John Ervine on Shaw, 1959{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}}}}

Following the [[United Kingdom declaration of war on Germany (1939)|outbreak of war]] on 3 September 1939 and the rapid [[Invasion of Poland|conquest of Poland]], Shaw was accused of defeatism when, in a ''New Statesman'' article, he declared the war over and demanded a peace conference.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=427}} Nevertheless, when he became convinced that a negotiated peace was impossible, he publicly urged the neutral United States to join the fight.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=742–743}} The [[The Blitz|London blitz]] of 1940–41 led the Shaws, both in their mid-eighties, to live full-time at Ayot St Lawrence. Even there they were not immune from enemy air raids, and stayed on occasion with Nancy Astor at her country house, [[Cliveden]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=744–747}} In 1943, the worst of the London bombing over, the Shaws moved back to Whitehall Court, where medical help for Charlotte was more easily arranged. Her condition deteriorated, and she died in September.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=744–747}}

Shaw's final political treatise, ''Everybody's Political What's What'', was published in 1944. Holroyd describes this as "a rambling narrative&nbsp;... that repeats ideas he had given better elsewhere and then repeats itself".{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|pp=480–481}} The book sold well—85,000 copies by the end of the year.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|pp=480–481}} After Hitler's suicide in May 1945, Shaw approved of the formal condolences offered by the Irish [[Taoiseach]], [[Éamon de Valera]], at the German embassy in Dublin.{{sfn|Geduld|1961|p=18}} Shaw disapproved of the postwar [[Nuremberg trials|trials of the defeated German leaders]], as an act of self-righteousness: "We are all potential criminals".{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=483}}

Pascal was given a third opportunity to film Shaw's work with ''[[Caesar and Cleopatra (film)|Caesar and Cleopatra]]'' (1945). It cost three times its original budget and was rated "the biggest financial failure in the history of British cinema".{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=477}} The film was poorly received by British critics, although American reviews were friendlier. Shaw thought its lavishness nullified the drama, and he considered the film "a poor imitation of [[Cecil B. de Mille]]".{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=768}}

[[File:Shaw's Corner at Ayot St Lawrence.jpg|thumb|left|alt=View of modest-sized country house from extensive gardens|Garden of Shaw's Corner]]

In 1946, the year of Shaw's ninetieth birthday, he accepted the freedom of Dublin and became the first honorary freeman of the borough of St Pancras, London.{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}} In the same year the British government asked Shaw informally whether he would accept the [[Order of Merit]]. He declined, believing that an author's merit could only be determined by the posthumous verdict of history.{{sfn|Martin|2007|p=484}}{{refn|In the early 1920s Lloyd George had considered putting Shaw's name forward for the award, but concluded that it would be more prudent to offer it to [[J. M. Barrie]], who accepted it. Shaw later said he would have refused it if offered, just as he refused the offer of a [[Knight Bachelor|knighthood]].{{sfn|Martin|2007|p=484}}|group=n}} 1946 saw the publication, as ''The Crime of Imprisonment'', of the preface Shaw had written 20 years previously to a study of prison conditions. It was widely praised; a reviewer in the ''[[American Journal of Public Health]]'' considered it essential reading for any student of the American criminal justice system.{{sfn|Broughton|1946|p=808}}

Shaw continued to write into his nineties. His last plays were ''[[Buoyant Billions]]'' (1947), his final full-length work; ''[[Farfetched Fables]]'' (1948) a set of six short plays revisiting several of his earlier themes such as evolution; a comic play for puppets, ''[[Shakes versus Shav]]'' (1949), a ten-minute piece in which Shakespeare and Shaw trade insults;{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|pp=486–488}} and ''[[Why She Would Not]]'' (1950), which Shaw described as "a little comedy", written in one week shortly before his ninety-fourth birthday.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|pp=508–511}}

During his later years, Shaw enjoyed tending the gardens at Shaw's Corner. He died at the age of 94 of [[renal failure]] precipitated by injuries incurred when falling while pruning a tree.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|pp=508–511}} He was [[Cremation|cremated]] at [[Golders Green Crematorium]] on 6 November 1950. His ashes, mixed with those of Charlotte, were scattered along footpaths and around the statue of Saint Joan in their garden.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=515}}{{sfn|Tyson|1982|p=116}}

==Works==
{{see also|List of works by George Bernard Shaw}}

===Plays===
Shaw published a collected edition of his plays in 1934, comprising forty-two works.{{sfn|Shaw|1934|pp=vii–viii}} He wrote a further twelve in the remaining sixteen years of his life, mostly [[one-act play|one-act]] pieces. Including eight earlier plays that he chose to omit from his published works, the total is sixty-two.{{refn|The works Shaw omitted from his ''Complete Plays'' were ''[[Passion Play: a dramatic fragment|Passion Play]]''; ''[[Un Petit Drame]]''; ''[[The Interlude at the Playhouse]]''; ''[[Beauty's Duty]]''; an untitled ''[[Macbeth Skit|parody of Macbeth]]''; ''[[A Glimpse of the Domesticity of Franklyn Barnabas]]'' and ''[[How These Doctors Love One Another!]]''.{{sfn|Shaw|1934|pp=vii–viii}}|group=n}}

====Early works====
{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote=
'''1890s'''

'''Full-length plays'''
*''[[Widowers' Houses]]''
*''[[The Philanderer]]''
*''[[Mrs Warren's Profession]]''
*''[[Arms and the Man]]''
*''[[Candida (play)|Candida]]''
*''[[You Never Can Tell (play)|You Never Can Tell]]''
*''[[Three Plays for Puritans]]'', comprising:
::*''[[The Devil's Disciple (play)|The Devil's Disciple]]''
::*''[[Caesar and Cleopatra (play)|Caesar and Cleopatra]]''
::*''[[Captain Brassbound's Conversion]]''

'''Adaptation'''
*''[[The Gadfly (play)|The Gadfly]]''

'''Short play'''
*''[[The Man of Destiny]]''
|salign = left}}

Shaw's first three full-length plays dealt with social issues. He later grouped them as "Plays Unpleasant".{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=400–405}} ''Widowers' Houses'' (1892) concerns the landlords of slum properties, and introduces the first of Shaw's [[New Woman|New Women]]—a recurring feature of later plays.{{sfn|Powell|1998|pp=74–78}} ''The Philanderer'' (1893) develops the theme of the New Woman, draws on Ibsen, and has elements of Shaw's personal relationships, the character of Julia being based on Jenny Patterson.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=28–30}} In a 2003 study Judith Evans describes ''Mrs Warren's Profession'' (1893) as "undoubtedly the most challenging" of the three Plays Unpleasant, taking Mrs Warren's profession—prostitute and, later, brothel-owner—as a metaphor for a prostituted society.{{sfn|Evans|2003|p=31}}

Shaw followed the first trilogy with a second, published as "Plays Pleasant".{{sfn|Holroyd|1990|pp=400–405}} ''Arms and the Man'' (1894) conceals beneath a mock-Ruritanian comic romance a Fabian parable contrasting impractical idealism with pragmatic socialism.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=34–35}} The central theme of ''Candida'' (1894) is a woman's choice between two men; the play contrasts the outlook and aspirations of a [[Christian socialism|Christian Socialist]] and a poetic idealist.{{sfn|Peters|1998|p=18}} The third of the Pleasant group, ''You Never Can Tell'' (1896), portrays social mobility, and the gap between generations, particularly in how they approach social relations in general and mating in particular.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=38–39}}

The ''[[Three Plays for Puritans]]''—comprising ''[[The Devil's Disciple (play)|The Devil's Disciple]]'' (1896), ''[[Caesar and Cleopatra (play)|Caesar and Cleopatra]]'' (1898) and ''[[Captain Brassbound's Conversion]]'' (1899)—all centre on questions of empire and imperialism, a major topic of political discourse in the 1890s.{{sfn|Evans|2003|p=41}} The three are set, respectively, in [[Thirteen Colonies|1770s America]], Ancient Egypt, and [[History of Morocco#European influence (c. 1830 – 1956)|1890s Morocco]].{{sfn|Shaw|1934|pp=218, 250 and 297}} ''The Gadfly'', an adaptation of [[The Gadfly|the popular novel]] by [[Ethel Voynich]], was unfinished and unperformed.{{sfn|Innes "Introduction"|1998|p=xxi}} ''The Man of Destiny'' (1895) is a short [[curtain raiser]] about [[Napoleon]].{{sfn|Wikander|1998|p=196}}

====1900–1909====
{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote=
'''1900–1909'''

'''Full-length plays'''
*''[[Man and Superman]]''
*''[[John Bull's Other Island]]''
*''[[Major Barbara]]''
*''[[The Doctor's Dilemma (play)|The Doctor's Dilemma]]''
*''[[Getting Married]]''
*''[[Misalliance (play)|Misalliance]]''

'''Short plays'''
*''[[The Admirable Bashville]]''
*''[[How He Lied to Her Husband]]''
*''[[Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction]]''
*''[[The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet]]''
*''[[Press Cuttings]]''
*''[[The Fascinating Foundling]]''
*''[[The Glimpse of Reality]]''
|salign = left}}

Shaw's major plays of the first decade of the twentieth century address individual social, political or ethical issues. ''Man and Superman'' (1902) stands apart from the others in both its subject and its treatment, giving Shaw's interpretation of [[Creative Evolution (book)|creative evolution]] in a combination of drama and associated printed text.{{sfn|Evans|2003|p=49}} ''The Admirable Bashville'' (1901), a blank verse dramatisation of Shaw's novel ''Cashel Byron's Profession'', focuses on the imperial relationship between [[British Africa|Britain and Africa]].{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=46–47}} ''John Bull's Other Island'' (1904), comically depicting the prevailing relationship between Britain and Ireland, was popular at the time but fell out of the general repertoire in later years.{{sfn|Gaye|1967|p=1410}} ''Major Barbara'' (1905) presents ethical questions in an unconventional way, confounding expectations that in the depiction of an armaments manufacturer on the one hand and the Salvation Army on the other the moral high ground must invariably be held by the latter.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=62–65}} ''The Doctor's Dilemma'' (1906), a play about medical ethics and moral choices in allocating scarce treatment, was described by Shaw as a tragedy.{{sfn|Shaw|1934|p=503}} With a reputation for presenting characters who did not resemble real flesh and blood,{{sfn|Beerbohm|1962|p=8}} he was challenged by Archer to present an on-stage death, and here did so, with a deathbed scene for the [[anti-hero]].{{sfn|Shaw|1934|p=540}}{{sfn|Holroyd|2012}}

''Getting Married'' (1908) and ''Misalliance'' (1909)—the latter seen by Judith Evans as a companion piece to the former—are both in what Shaw called his "disquisitionary" vein, with the emphasis on discussion of ideas rather than on dramatic events or vivid characterisation.{{sfn|Sharp|1959|pp=103 and 105}} Shaw wrote seven short plays during the decade; they are all comedies, ranging from the deliberately absurd ''[[Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction]]'' (1905) to the satirical ''[[Press Cuttings]]'' (1909).{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=80 and 82}}

====1910–1919====
{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote=
'''1910–1919'''

'''Full-length plays'''
*''[[Fanny's First Play]]''
*''[[Androcles and the Lion (play)|Androcles and the Lion]]''
*''[[Pygmalion (play)|Pygmalion]]''
*''[[Heartbreak House]]''

'''Short plays'''
*''[[The Dark Lady of the Sonnets]]''
*''[[Overruled (play)|Overruled]]''
*''[[The Music Cure]]''
*''[[Great Catherine: Whom Glory Still Adores|Great Catherine]]''
*''[[The Inca of Perusalem]]''
*''[[O'Flaherty V.C.]]''
*''[[Augustus Does His Bit]]''
*''[[Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress]]''
|salign = left}}

In the decade from 1910 to the aftermath of the First World War Shaw wrote four full-length plays, the third and fourth of which are among his most frequently staged works.{{sfn|Gaye|1967|pp=1366 and 1466}} ''Fanny's First Play'' (1911) continues his earlier examinations of middle-class British society from a Fabian viewpoint, with additional touches of melodrama and an epilogue in which theatre critics discuss the play.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=75–78}} ''Androcles and the Lion'' (1912), which Shaw began writing as a play for children, became a study of the nature of religion and how to put Christian precepts into practice.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=99–101}} ''Pygmalion'' (1912) is a Shavian study of language and speech and their importance in society and in personal relationships. To correct the impression left by the original performers that the play portrayed a romantic relationship between the two main characters Shaw rewrote the ending to make it clear that the heroine will marry another, minor character.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=101 and 104}}{{refn|In a 2003 encyclopaedia article on Shaw, Nicholas Grene writes, "The Cinderella story of the flower-girl turned into a lady by a professor of phonetics resulted in a lifelong struggle by Shaw, first with&nbsp;... Tree and then with film producers, to prevent it being returned to stock with a 'happy' ending. This was a battle Shaw was to lose posthumously when the sugar-coated musical comedy adaptation, Lerner and Loewe's ''My Fair Lady'' (1956), went on to make more money for the Shaw estate than all his plays put together."{{sfn|Grene 2003 ''Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre''}}|group=n}} Shaw's only full-length play from the war years is ''Heartbreak House'' (1917), which in his words depicts "cultured, leisured Europe before the war" drifting towards disaster.{{sfn|Dervin|1975|p=286}} Shaw named Shakespeare (''[[King Lear]]'') and [[Anton Chekhov|Chekhov]] (''[[The Cherry Orchard]]'') as important influences on the piece, and critics have found elements drawing on [[William Congreve|Congreve]] (''[[The Way of the World]]'') and Ibsen (''[[The Master Builder]]'').{{sfn|Dervin|1975|p=286}}{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=10}}

The short plays range from genial historical drama in ''The Dark Lady of the Sonnets'' and ''Great Catherine'' (1910 and 1913) to a study of polygamy in ''Overruled''; three satirical works about the war (''The Inca of Perusalem'', ''O'Flaherty V.C.'' and ''Augustus Does His Bit'', 1915–16); a piece that Shaw called "utter nonsense" (''The Music Cure'', 1914) and a brief sketch about a "Bolshevik empress" (''Annajanska'', 1917).{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=106–114}}

====1920–1950====
{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote=
'''1920–1950'''

'''Full-length plays'''
* ''[[Back to Methuselah]]''
* ''[[Saint Joan (play)|Saint Joan]]''
* ''[[The Apple Cart]]''
* ''[[Too True to Be Good]]''
* ''[[On the Rocks: A Political Comedy|On the Rocks]]''
* ''[[The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles]]''
* ''[[The Millionairess (play)|The Millionairess]]''
* ''[[Geneva (play)|Geneva]]''
* ''[[In Good King Charles's Golden Days]]''
* ''[[Buoyant Billions]]''

'''Short plays'''
* ''[[Village Wooing]]''
* ''[[The Six of Calais]]''
* ''[[Cymbeline Refinished]]''
* ''[[Farfetched Fables]]''
* ''[[Shakes versus Shav]]''
* ''[[Why She Would Not]]''
|salign = left}}
''Saint Joan'' (1923) drew widespread praise both for Shaw and for Sybil Thorndike, for whom he wrote the title role and who created the part in Britain.{{sfn|Croall|2008|pp=166 and 169}} In the view of the commentator Nicholas Grene, Shaw's Joan, a "no-nonsense mystic, Protestant and nationalist before her time" is among the 20th century's classic leading female roles.{{sfn|Grene 2003 ''Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre''}} ''The Apple Cart'' (1929) was Shaw's last popular success.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=161}} He gave both that play and its successor, ''Too True to Be Good'' (1931), the subtitle "A political extravaganza", although the two works differ greatly in their themes; the first presents the politics of a nation (with a brief royal love-scene as an interlude) and the second, in Judith Evans's words, "is concerned with the social mores of the individual, and is nebulous."{{sfn|Evans|2003|p=154}} Shaw's plays of the 1930s were written in the shadow of worsening national and international political events. Once again, with ''On the Rocks'' (1933) and ''The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles'' (1934), a political comedy with a clear plot was followed by an introspective drama. The first play portrays a British prime minister considering, but finally rejecting, the establishment of a dictatorship; the second is concerned with polygamy and [[eugenics]] and ends with the [[Last Judgment|Day of Judgement]].{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=163–168}}

''The Millionairess'' (1934) is a farcical depiction of the commercial and social affairs of a successful businesswoman. ''Geneva'' (1936) lampoons the feebleness of the League of Nations compared with the dictators of Europe. ''In Good King Charles's Golden Days'' (1939), described by Weintraub as a warm, discursive high comedy, also depicts authoritarianism, but less satirically than ''Geneva''.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} As in earlier decades, the shorter plays were generally comedies, some historical and others addressing various political and social preoccupations of the author. Ervine writes of Shaw's later work that although it was still "astonishingly vigorous and vivacious" it showed unmistakable signs of his age. "The best of his work in this period, however, was full of wisdom and the beauty of mind often displayed by old men who keep their wits about them."{{sfn|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}}

===Music and drama reviews===

====Music====
Shaw's collected musical criticism, published in three volumes, runs to more than 2,700 pages.{{sfn|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 3) 1981|pp=805–925}} It covers the British musical scene from 1876 to 1950, but the core of the collection dates from his six years as music critic of ''The Star'' and ''The World'' in the late 1880s and early 1890s. In his view music criticism should be interesting to everyone rather than just the musical élite, and he wrote for the non-specialist, avoiding technical jargon—"Mesopotamian words like 'the dominant of D major'".{{refn|In 1893 Shaw's column included his parody of music critics' idiom in a mock-academic analysis of Hamlet's "[[To be, or not to be|To be or not to be]]" soliloquy: "Shakespear, dispensing with the customary exordium, announces his subject at once in the infinitive, in which mood it is presently repeated after a short connecting passage in which, brief as it is, we recognize the alternative and negative forms on which so much of the significance of repetition depends. Here we reach a colon; and a pointed pository phrase, in which the accent falls decisively on the relative pronoun, brings us to the first full stop."{{sfn|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 2) 1981|p=898}}|group=n}} He was fiercely partisan in his columns, promoting the music of Wagner and decrying that of [[Johannes Brahms|Brahms]] and those British composers such as [[Charles Villiers Stanford|Stanford]] and [[Hubert Parry|Parry]] whom he saw as Brahmsian.{{sfn|Anderson: ''Grove Music Online''}}{{sfn|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 2) 1981|p=429}} He campaigned against the prevailing fashion for performances of [[George Frideric Handel|Handel]] [[oratorio]]s with huge amateur choirs and inflated orchestration, calling for "a chorus of twenty capable artists".{{sfn|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 2) 1981|pp=245–246}} He railed against opera productions unrealistically staged or sung in languages the audience did not speak.{{sfn|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 1) 1981|p=14}}

====Drama====
In Shaw's view, the London theatres of the 1890s presented too many revivals of old plays and not enough new work. He campaigned against "[[melodrama]], [[sentimentality]], [[Media stereotypes|stereotypes]] and worn-out conventions".{{sfn|Berst|1998|p=71}} As a music critic he had frequently been able to concentrate on analysing new works, but in the theatre he was often obliged to fall back on discussing how various performers tackled well-known plays. In a study of Shaw's work as a theatre critic, E. J. West writes that Shaw "ceaselessly compared and contrasted artists in interpretation and in technique". Shaw contributed more than 150 articles as theatre critic for ''The Saturday Review'', in which he assessed more than 212 productions.{{sfn|West|1952|p=204}} He championed [[Henrik Ibsen|Ibsen]]'s plays when many theatregoers regarded them as outrageous, and his 1891 book ''[[Quintessence of Ibsenism]]'' remained a classic throughout the twentieth century.{{sfn|Berst|1998|p=56}} Of contemporary dramatists writing for the West End stage he rated [[Oscar Wilde]] above the rest: "...&nbsp;our only thorough playwright. He plays with everything: with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors and audience, with the whole theatre".{{sfn|Berst|1998|pp=67–68}} Shaw's collected criticisms were published as ''Our Theatres in the Nineties'' in 1932.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=210–211}}

Shaw maintained a provocative and frequently self-contradictory attitude to Shakespeare (whose name he insisted on spelling "Shakespear").{{sfn|Pierce|2011|pp=118–119}} Many found him difficult to take seriously on the subject; [[Duff Cooper]] observed that by attacking Shakespeare, "it is Shaw who appears a ridiculous pigmy shaking his fist at a mountain."{{sfn|Cooper|1953|p=40}} Shaw was, nevertheless, a knowledgeable Shakespearian, and in an article in which he wrote, "With the single exception of [[Homer]], there is no eminent writer, not even [[Walter Scott|Sir Walter Scott]], whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespear when I measure my mind against his," he also said, "But I am bound to add that I pity the man who cannot enjoy Shakespear. He has outlasted thousands of abler thinkers, and will outlast a thousand more".{{sfn|Pierce|2011|pp=118–119}} Shaw had two regular targets for his more extreme comments about Shakespeare: undiscriminating "[[Bardolatry|Bardolaters]]", and actors and directors who presented insensitively cut texts in over-elaborate productions.{{sfn|Pierce|2011|pp=121 and 129}}{{refn|In a 1969 study, John F. Matthews credits Shaw with a successful campaign against the two-hundred-year-old tradition of [[Shakespeare in performance#19th century|editing Shakespeare]] into "acting versions", often designed to give star actors greater prominence, to the detriment of the play as a whole.{{sfn|Matthews|1969|pp=16–17}}{{sfn|Pierce|2011|pp=120–121}} Shaw was in favour of cuts intended to enhance the drama by omitting what he saw as Shakespearean rhetoric.{{sfn|Pierce|2011|p=127}}|group=n}} He was continually drawn back to Shakespeare, and wrote three plays with Shakespearean themes: ''[[The Dark Lady of the Sonnets]]'', ''Cymbeline Refinished'' and ''Shakes versus Shav''.{{sfn|Pierce|2011|p=131}} In a 2001 analysis of Shaw's Shakespearian criticisms, Robert Pierce concludes that Shaw, who was no academic, saw Shakespeare's plays—like all theatre—from an author's practical point of view: "Shaw helps us to get away from the Romantics' picture of Shakespeare as a titanic genius, one whose art cannot be analyzed or connected with the mundane considerations of theatrical conditions and profit and loss, or with a specific staging and cast of actors."{{sfn|Pierce|2011|p=129}}

===Political and social writings===
Shaw's political and social commentaries were published variously in Fabian tracts, in essays, in two full-length books, in innumerable newspaper and journal articles and in prefaces to his plays. The majority of Shaw's Fabian tracts were published anonymously, representing the voice of the society rather than of Shaw, although the society's secretary [[Edward R. Pease|Edward Pease]] later confirmed Shaw's authorship.{{sfn|Fabian Tracts: 1884–1901}} According to Holroyd, the business of the early Fabians, mainly under the influence of Shaw, was to "alter history by rewriting it".{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|p=132}} Shaw's talent as a pamphleteer was put to immediate use in the production of the society's manifesto—after which, says Holroyd, he was never again so succinct.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|p=132}}

After the turn of the twentieth century, Shaw increasingly propagated his ideas through the medium of his plays. An early critic, writing in 1904, observed that Shaw's dramas provided "a pleasant means" of proselytising his socialism, adding that "Mr Shaw's views are to be sought especially in the prefaces to his plays".{{sfn|Hoffsten|1904|p=219}} After loosening his ties with the Fabian movement in 1911, Shaw's writings were more personal and often provocative; his response to the furore following the issue of ''Common Sense About the War'' in 1914, was to prepare a sequel, ''More Common Sense About the War''. In this, he denounced the pacifist line espoused by Ramsay MacDonald and other socialist leaders, and proclaimed his readiness to shoot all pacifists rather than cede them power and influence.{{sfn|Griffith|1993|p=228}} On the advice of Beatrice Webb, this pamphlet remained unpublished.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|p=361}}

''The Intelligent Woman's Guide'', Shaw's main political treatise of the 1920s, attracted both admiration and criticism. MacDonald considered it the world's most important book since the Bible;{{sfn|Wallis|1991|p=185}} [[Harold Laski]] thought its arguments outdated and lacking in concern for individual freedoms.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|pp=128–131}}{{refn|In 1937 the book was reissued, with additional chapters and an extended title, ''The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism'', and was published by [[Penguin Books]] as the first in the new paperback series called [[Pelican Books|Pelicans]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=373}}|group=n}} Shaw's increasing flirtation with dictatorial methods is evident in many of his subsequent pronouncements. A ''New York Times'' report dated 10 December 1933 quoted a recent Fabian Society lecture in which Shaw had praised Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin: "[T]hey are trying to get something done, [and] are adopting methods by which it is possible to get something done".{{sfn|''The New York Times'', 10 December 1933}} As late as the Second World War, in ''Everybody's Political What's What'', Shaw blamed the [[Allies of World War I|Allies]]' "abuse" of their 1918 victory for the rise of Hitler, and hoped that, after defeat, the Führer would escape retribution "to enjoy a comfortable retirement in Ireland or some other neutral country".{{sfn|Shaw: ''Everybody's Political What's What'' 1944|pp=137 and 249}} These sentiments, according to the Irish philosopher-poet Thomas Duddy, "rendered much of the Shavian outlook passé and contemptible".{{sfn|Merriman|2010|pp=219–220}}

"Creative evolution", Shaw's version of the new science of eugenics, became an increasing theme in his political writing after 1900. He introduced his theories in ''The Revolutionist's Handbook'' (1903), an appendix to ''Man and Superman'', and developed them further during the 1920s in ''Back to Methuselah''. A 1946 ''Life'' magazine article observed that Shaw had "always tended to look at people more as a biologist than as an artist".{{sfn|''Life'' editorial: "All honor to his genius&nbsp;...", 12 August 1946|p=26}} By 1933, in the preface to ''On the Rocks'', he was writing that "if we desire a certain type of civilization and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it";{{sfn|Shaw: Preface, ''On the Rocks'' (Section: "Previous Attempts miss the Point") 1933}} critical opinion is divided on whether this was intended as irony.{{sfn|Nestruck|2011}}{{refn|The science historian [[Daniel Kevles]] writes: "Shaw&nbsp;... did not spare the eugenics movement his unpredictable mockery&nbsp;... [he] acted the outrageous buffoon at times."{{sfn|Kevles|1995|p=86}}|group=n}} In an article in the American magazine ''Liberty'' in September 1938, Shaw included the statement: "There are many people in the world who ought to be liquidated".{{sfn|''Life'' editorial: "All honor to his genius&nbsp;...", 12 August 1946|p=26}} Many commentators assumed that such comments were intended as a joke, although in the worst possible taste.{{sfn|Searle|1976|p=92}} Otherwise, ''Life'' magazine concluded, "this silliness can be classed with his more innocent bad guesses".{{sfn|''Life'' editorial: "All honor to his genius&nbsp;...", 12 August 1946|p=26}}{{refn| In the 21st century Shaw's 1930s flirtations with fascism and his association with eugenics have been resurrected by American TV talk-show hosts to depict him as a "monster" and to similarly disparage the causes and institutions with which he was associated, most particularly the Fabian Society and socialism.{{sfn|Nestruck|2011}}|group=n}}

===Fiction===
Shaw's fiction-writing was largely confined to the five unsuccessful novels written in the period 1879–1885. ''Immaturity'' (1879) is a semi-autobiographical portrayal of mid-Victorian England, Shaw's "own ''David Copperfield''" according to Weintraub.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} ''The Irrational Knot'' (1880) is a critique of conventional marriage, in which Weintraub finds the characterisations lifeless, "hardly more than animated theories".{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} Shaw was pleased with his third novel, ''Love Among the Artists'' (1881), feeling that it marked a turning point in his development as a thinker, although he had no more success with it than with its predecessors.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=96–97}} ''Cashel Byron's Profession'' (1882) is, says Weintraub, an indictment of society which anticipates Shaw's first full-length play, ''Mrs Warren's Profession''.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} Shaw later explained that he had intended ''An Unsocial Socialist'' as the first section of a monumental depiction of the downfall of capitalism. [[Gareth Griffiths (academic)|Gareth Griffith]], in a study of Shaw's political thought, sees the novel as an interesting record of conditions, both in society at large and in the nascent socialist movement of the 1880s.{{sfn|Griffith|1993|p=26}}

Shaw's only subsequent fiction of any substance was his 1932 novella ''[[The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God]]'', written during a visit to South Africa in 1932. The eponymous girl, intelligent, inquisitive, and converted to Christianity by insubstantial missionary teaching, sets out to find God, on a journey that after many adventures and encounters, leads her to a secular conclusion.{{sfn|Kent|2008|pp=278–279}} The story, on publication, offended some Christians and was banned in Ireland by the Board of Censors.{{sfn|Kent|2008|p=291}}

===Letters and diaries===
[[File:Bernard-Shaw-1904.jpg|thumb|alt=Caricature of middle-aged bearded man at his ease in an armchair|"The strenuous literary life—George Bernard Shaw at work": 1904 caricature by [[Max Beerbohm]]]]
Shaw was a prolific correspondent throughout his life. His letters, edited by Dan H. Laurence, were published between 1965 and 1988.{{sfn|Wisenthal|1998|p=305}} Shaw once estimated his letters would occupy twenty volumes; Laurence commented that, unedited, they would fill many more.{{sfn|Weales|p=520}} Shaw wrote more than a quarter of a million letters, of which about ten per cent have survived; 2,653 letters are printed in Laurence's four volumes.{{sfn|Crawford|1990|p=148}} Among Shaw's many regular correspondents were his childhood friend [[Edward McNulty]]; his theatrical colleagues (and ''[[platonic love|amitiés amoureuses]]'') [[Mrs Patrick Campbell]] and [[Ellen Terry]]; writers including [[Lord Alfred Douglas]], H. G. Wells and G. K. Chesterton; the boxer [[Gene Tunney]]; the nun [[Laurentia McLachlan]]; and the art expert [[Sydney Cockerell]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=94–95 (McNulty); 197–198 (Terry); 534 (Chesterton); 545–547 (Campbell); 604–606 (Tunney); 606–610 (Cockerell and McLachlan); and 833 (Wells)}}{{refn|Individual volumes have been published of the correspondence with Terry (issued 1931), Tunney (1951), Campbell (1952), Douglas (1982) and Wells (1995).{{sfn|Pharand: Shaw chronology 2015}}|group=n}} In 2007 a 316-page volume consisting entirely of Shaw's letters to ''The Times'' was published.{{sfn|Pharand: Shaw chronology 2015}}

Shaw's diaries for 1885–1897, edited by Weintraub, were published in two volumes, with a total of 1,241 pages, in 1986. Reviewing them, the Shaw scholar Fred Crawford wrote: "Although the primary interest for Shavians is the material that supplements what we already know about Shaw's life and work, the diaries are also valuable as a historical and sociological document of English life at the end of the Victorian age." After 1897, pressure of other writing led Shaw to give up keeping a diary.{{sfn|Crawford|1988|pp=142–143}}

===Miscellaneous and autobiographical===
Through his journalism, pamphlets and occasional longer works, Shaw wrote on many subjects. His range of interest and enquiry included [[vivisection]], vegetarianism, religion, language, cinema and photography,{{refn|Shaw was an enthusiastic amateur photographer from 1898 until his death, amassing about 10,000 prints and more than 10,000 negatives documenting his friends, travels, politics, plays, films and home life. The collection is archived at the London School of Economics; an exhibition of his photography, "Man & Cameraman", opened in 2011 at the [[Lacock Abbey|Fox Talbot Museum]] in conjunction with an online exhibition presented by the LSE.{{sfn|Kennedy, ''The Guardian'', 5 July 2011}}|group=n}} on all of which he wrote and spoke copiously. Collections of his writings on these and other subjects were published, mainly after his death, together with volumes of "wit and wisdom" and general journalism.{{sfn|Pharand: Shaw chronology 2015}}

Despite the many books written about him (Holroyd counts 80 by 1939){{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=367}} Shaw's autobiographical output, apart from his diaries, was relatively slight. He gave interviews to newspapers—"GBS Confesses", to ''[[The Daily Mail]]'' in 1904 is an example{{sfn|Hugo|1999|pp=22–23}}—and provided sketches to would-be biographers whose work was rejected by Shaw and never published.{{sfn|Leary|1971|pp=3–11}} In 1939 Shaw drew on these materials to produce ''Shaw Gives Himself Away'', a miscellany which, a year before his death, he revised and republished as ''Sixteen Self Sketches'' (there were seventeen). He made it clear to his publishers that this slim book was in no sense a full autobiography.{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=495}}

==Beliefs and opinions==
{{Eugenics sidebar}}
{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=left|quote=Shaw was a poseur and a puritan; he was similarly a bourgeois and an antibourgeois writer, working for Hearst and posterity; his didacticism is entertaining and his pranks are purposeful; he supports socialism and is tempted by fascism.|salign=left|source=—Leonard Feinberg, ''The Satirist'' (2006){{sfn|Feinberg|2006|p=164}}}}
Throughout his lifetime Shaw professed many beliefs, often contradictory. This inconsistency was partly an intentional provocation—the Spanish scholar-statesman [[Salvador de Madariaga]] describes Shaw as "a pole of negative electricity set in a people of positive electricity".{{sfn|Evans|1976|p=365}} In one area at least Shaw was constant: in his lifelong refusal to follow normal English forms of spelling and punctuation. He favoured archaic spellings such as "shew" for "show"; he dropped the "u" in words like "honour" and "favour"; and wherever possible he rejected the apostrophe in contractions such as "won't" or "that's".{{sfn|Conolly|2005|pp=80–81}} In his will, Shaw ordered that, after some specified legacies, his remaining assets were to form a trust to pay for fundamental reform of the English alphabet into a phonetic version of forty letters.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} Though Shaw's intentions were clear, his drafting was flawed, and the courts initially ruled the intended trust void. A later out-of-court agreement provided a sum of £8,300 for spelling reform; the bulk of his fortune went to the residuary legatees—the British Museum, the [[Royal Academy of Dramatic Art]] and the [[National Gallery of Ireland]].{{sfn|Holroyd|1992|pp=16–21}}{{refn|The estate was officially assessed as worth £367,233 at the time of Shaw's death. Although [[death duties]] severely reduced the residuary sum, royalties from ''[[My Fair Lady]]'' later boosted the income of the estate by several million pounds.{{sfn|''The Times'', 24 March 1951|p=8}}{{sfn|''The Times'', 7 April 1992|p=1(S)}}|group=n}} Most of the £8,300 went on a special phonetic edition of ''Androcles and the Lion'' in the [[Shavian alphabet]], published in 1962 to a largely indifferent reception.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=800–804}}
[[File:George bernard shaw.jpg|thumb|upright|left|alt=Middle-aged man with bushy beard|Shaw in 1905]]
Shaw's views on religion and Christianity were less consistent. Having in his youth proclaimed himself an atheist, in middle age he explained this as a reaction against the [[Old Testament]] image of a vengeful Jehovah. By the early twentieth century, he termed himself a "mystic", although Gary Sloan, in an essay on Shaw's beliefs, disputes his credentials as such.{{sfn|Sloan: The religion of George Bernard Shaw 2004}} In 1913 Shaw declared that he was not religious "in the sectarian sense", aligning himself with Jesus as "a person of no religion".{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|p=287}} In the preface (1915) to ''Androcles and the Lion'', Shaw asks "Why not give Christianity a chance?" contending that Britain's social order resulted from the continuing choice of [[Barabbas]] over Christ.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|p=287}} In a broadcast just before the Second World War, Shaw invoked the [[Sermon on the Mount]], "a very moving exhortation, and it gives you one first-rate tip, which is to do good to those who despitefully use you and persecute you".{{sfn|Sloan: The religion of George Bernard Shaw 2004}} In his will, Shaw stated that his "religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative revolution".{{sfn|Religion: Creative Revolutionary: ''Time'', December 1950}} He requested that no one should imply that he accepted the beliefs of any specific religious organisation, and that no memorial to him should "take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice".{{sfn|Religion: Creative Revolutionary: ''Time'', December 1950}}

Shaw espoused racial equality, and inter-marriage between people of different races.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=643–647}} Despite his expressed wish to be fair to Hitler,{{sfn|Holroyd|1993|p=421}} he called anti-Semitism "the hatred of the lazy, ignorant fat-headed Gentile for the pertinacious Jew who, schooled by adversity to use his brains to the utmost, outdoes him in business".{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=543}} In ''[[The Jewish Chronicle]]'' he wrote in 1932, "In every country you can find rabid people who have a phobia against Jews, Jesuits, Armenians, Negroes, Freemasons, Irishmen, or simply foreigners as such. Political parties are not above exploiting these fears and jealousies."{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|p=733}}

In 1903 Shaw joined in a [[vaccine controversies|controversy about vaccination]] against smallpox. He called vaccination "a peculiarly <!-- not "particularly"! --> filthy piece of witchcraft";{{sfn|Shaw and Laurence 1965|p=448}} in his view immunisation campaigns were a cheap and inadequate substitute for a decent programme of housing for the poor, which would, he declared, be the means of eradicating smallpox and other infectious diseases.{{sfn|Holroyd|1997|pp=55–56}} Less contentiously, Shaw was keenly interested in transport; Laurence observed in 1992 a need for a published study of Shaw's interest in "bicycling, motorbikes, automobiles, and planes, climaxing in his joining the [[British Interplanetary Society|Interplanetary Society]] in his nineties".{{sfn|Dukore ''et al.'' 1994|p=268}} Shaw published articles on travel, took photographs of his journeys, and submitted notes to the [[Royal Automobile Club]].{{sfn|Dukore ''et al.'' 1994|p=268}}

Shaw strove throughout his adult life to be referred to as "Bernard Shaw" rather than "George Bernard Shaw", but confused matters by continuing to use his full initials—G.B.S.—as a by-line, and often signed himself "G.{{space}}Bernard Shaw".{{sfn|Nothorcot|1964|pp=3–5}} He left instructions in his will that his executor (the [[Public Trustee]]) was to license publication of his works only under the name Bernard Shaw.{{sfn|Weintraub|2013}} Shaw scholars including Ervine, Judith Evans, Holroyd, Laurence and Weintraub, and many publishers have respected Shaw's preference, although the [[Cambridge University Press]] was among the exceptions with its 1988 ''Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw''.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=210–211}}

==Legacy and influence==

===Theatrical===
{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote=Shaw, arguably the most important English-language playwright after Shakespeare, produced an immense ''oeuvre'', of which at least half a dozen plays remain part of the world repertoire.{{space}}... Academically unfashionable, of limited influence even in areas such as Irish drama and British political theatre where influence might be expected, Shaw's unique and unmistakable plays keep escaping from the safely dated category of period piece to which they have often been consigned.|salign=left|source= ''Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre'' (2003){{sfn|Grene 2003 ''Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre''}}}}
Shaw did not found a school of dramatists as such, but Crawford asserts that today "we recognise [him] as second only to Shakespeare in the British theatrical tradition&nbsp;... the proponent of the theater of ideas" who struck a death-blow to 19th-century melodrama.{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=103}} According to Laurence, Shaw pioneered "intelligent" theatre, in which the audience was required to think, thereby paving the way for the new breeds of twentieth-century playwrights from [[John Galsworthy|Galsworthy]] to [[Harold Pinter|Pinter]].{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=103 (Crawford quotes Laurence, but does not state the source)}}

Crawford lists numerous playwrights whose work owes something to that of Shaw. Among those active in Shaw's lifetime he includes [[Noël Coward]], who based his early comedy ''[[The Young Idea]]'' on ''You Never Can Tell'' and continued to draw on the older man's works in later plays.{{sfn|Crawford|1993|pp=104–105}}{{sfn|Coward|2004|pp=114–115}} [[T. S. Eliot]], by no means an admirer of Shaw, admitted that the epilogue of ''[[Murder in the Cathedral]]'', in which [[Thomas Becket|Becket]]'s slayers explain their actions to the audience, might have been influenced by ''Saint Joan''.{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=107}} The critic [[Eric Bentley]] comments that Eliot's later play ''[[The Confidential Clerk]]'' "had all the earmarks of Shavianism&nbsp;... without the merits of the real Bernard Shaw".{{sfn|Bentley|1968|p=144}} Among more recent British dramatists, Crawford marks [[Tom Stoppard]] as "the most Shavian of contemporary playwrights";{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=108}} Shaw's "serious farce" is continued in the works of Stoppard's contemporaries [[Alan Ayckbourn]], [[Henry Livings]] and [[Peter Nichols (playwright)|Peter Nichols]].{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=109}}

[[File:Set of the complete plays of Shaw.png|thumb|left|Shaw's complete plays]]
Shaw's influence crossed the Atlantic at an early stage. Bernard Dukore notes that he was successful as a dramatist in America ten years before achieving comparable success in Britain.{{sfn|Dukore|1992|p=128}} Among many American writers professing a direct debt to Shaw, [[Eugene O'Neill]] became an admirer at the age of seventeen, after reading ''The Quintessence of Ibsenism''.{{sfn|Alexander|1959|p=307}} Other Shaw-influenced American playwrights mentioned by Dukore are [[Elmer Rice]], for whom Shaw "opened doors, turned on lights, and expanded horizons";{{sfn|Dukore|1992|p=132}} [[William Saroyan]], who empathised with Shaw as "the embattled individualist against the philistines";{{sfn|Dukore|1992|p=133}} and [[S. N. Behrman]], who was inspired to write for the theatre after attending a performance of ''Caesar and Cleopatra'': "I thought it would be agreeable to write plays like that".{{sfn|Dukore|1992|p=134}}

Assessing Shaw's reputation in a 1976 critical study, T. F. Evans described Shaw as unchallenged in his lifetime and since as the leading English-language dramatist of the (twentieth) century, and as a master of prose style.{{sfn|Evans|1976|p=1}} The following year, in a contrary assessment, the playwright [[John Osborne]] castigated ''[[The Guardian]]''{{'}}s theatre critic [[Michael Billington (critic)|Michael Billington]] for referring to Shaw as "the greatest British dramatist since Shakespeare". Osborne responded that Shaw "is the most fraudulent, inept writer of Victorian melodramas ever to gull a timid critic or fool a dull public".{{sfn|Osborne|1977|p=12}} Despite this hostility, Crawford sees the influence of Shaw in some of Osborne's plays, and concludes that though the latter's work is neither imitative nor derivative, these affinities are sufficient to classify Osborne as an inheritor of Shaw.{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=108}}

In a 1983 study, R. J. Kaufmann suggests that Shaw was a key forerunner—"godfather, if not actually finicky paterfamilias"—of the [[Theatre of the Absurd]].{{sfn|Kaufmann|1965|p=11}} Two further aspects of Shaw's theatrical legacy are noted by Crawford: his opposition to stage censorship, which was finally ended in 1968, and his efforts which extended over many years to establish a [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]].{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=109}} Shaw's short 1910 play ''The Dark Lady of the Sonnets'', in which Shakespeare pleads with [[Elizabeth I of England|Queen Elizabeth I]] for the endowment of a state theatre, was part of this campaign.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=270–71}}

Writing in ''The New Statesman'' in 2012 Daniel Janes commented that Shaw's reputation had declined by the time of his 150th anniversary in 2006 but had recovered considerably. In Janes's view, the many current revivals of Shaw's major works showed the playwright's "almost unlimited relevance to our times".{{sfn|Janes, ''New Statesman'', 20 July 2012}} In the same year, [[Mark Lawson]] wrote in ''The Guardian'' that Shaw's moral concerns engaged present-day audiences, and made him—like his model, Ibsen—one of the most popular playwrights in contemporary British theatre.{{sfn|Lawson, ''The Guardian'', 11 July 2012}}

The [[Shaw Festival]] in [[Niagara-on-the-Lake|Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada]] is the second largest repertory theatre company in North America. It produces plays by or written during the lifetime of Shaw as well as some contemporary works.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Walker|first1=Craig S.|last2=Wise|first2=Jennifer|title=The Broadview Anthology of Drama, Volume 2: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries|date=9 July 2003|publisher=Broadview Press|page=205|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b_Ocr-WlM7wC&pg=PA205}}</ref> The [[Gingold Theatrical Group]], founded in 2006, presents works by Shaw and others in New York City that feature the humanitarian ideals that his work promoted.<ref>Smith, Wendy. [https://www.americantheatre.org/2014/10/21/the-shaw-must-go-on-david-staller-makes-the-case-for-the-writers-many-facets "The Shaw Must Go On: David Staller Makes the Case for the Writer’s Many Facets"], [[American Theatre magazine|''American Theatre'']], November 2014, accessed 3 June 2018</ref> It became the first theatre group to present all of Shaw's stage work through its monthly concert series ''Project Shaw''.<ref>Keddy, Genevieve Rafter. [https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-broadway/article/Photo-Coverage-Project-Shaw-Presents-SUPER-SHAW-WOMEN-20170718 "Project Shaw Presents ''Super Shaw Women''], 18 July 2017, accessed 3 June 2018</ref>

===General===
[[File:George Bernard Shaw - bust by Jacob Epstein.jpg|thumb|right|Bust by [[Jacob Epstein]], 1934]]
In the 1940s the author [[Harold Nicolson]] advised the [[National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty|National Trust]] not to accept the bequest of Shaw's Corner, predicting that Shaw would be totally forgotten within fifty years.{{sfn|Dukore ''et al.'' 1994|p=266}} In the event, Shaw's broad cultural legacy, embodied in the widely used term "Shavian", has endured and is nurtured by Shaw Societies in various parts of the world. The original society was founded in London in 1941 and survives; it organises meetings and events, and publishes a regular bulletin ''The Shavian''. The Shaw Society of America began in June 1950; it foundered in the 1970s but its journal, adopted by Penn State University Press, continued to be published as ''Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies'' until 2004. A second American organisation, founded in 1951 as "The Bernard Shaw Society", remains active {{as of|2016|lc=y}}. More recent societies have been established in Japan and India.{{sfn|Weintraub: Shaw Societies Once and Now}}

Besides his collected music criticism, Shaw has left a varied musical legacy, not all of it of his choosing. Despite his dislike of having his work adapted for the musical theatre ("my plays set themselves to a verbal music of their own"){{sfn|Reed|1939|p=142}} two of his plays were turned into musical comedies: ''Arms and the Man'' was the basis of ''[[The Chocolate Soldier]]'' in 1908, with music by [[Oscar Straus (composer)|Oscar Straus]], and ''Pygmalion'' was adapted in 1956 as ''[[My Fair Lady]]'' with book and lyrics by [[Alan Jay Lerner]] and music by [[Frederick Loewe]].{{sfn|Anderson: ''Grove Music Online''}} Although he had a high regard for Elgar, Shaw turned down the composer's request for an opera libretto, but played a major part in persuading the BBC to commission Elgar's [[Symphony No. 3 (Elgar/Payne)|Third Symphony]], and was the dedicatee of ''[[The Severn Suite]]'' (1930).{{sfn|Anderson: ''Grove Music Online''}}{{sfn|Reed|1939|pp=138 and 142}}

The substance of Shaw's political legacy is uncertain. In 1921 Shaw's erstwhile collaborator William Archer, in a letter to the playwright, wrote: "I doubt if there is any case of a man so widely read, heard, seen, and known as yourself, who has produced so little effect on his generation."{{sfn|Morgan|1951|p=100}} Margaret Cole, who considered Shaw the greatest writer of his age, professed never to have understood him. She thought he worked "immensely hard" at politics, but essentially, she surmises, it was for fun—"the fun of a brilliant artist".{{sfn|Cole|1949|p=148}} After Shaw's death, Pearson wrote: "No one since the time of [[Thomas Paine|Tom Paine]] has had so definite an influence on the social and political life of his time and country as Bernard Shaw."{{sfn|Morgan|1951|p=100}}

In its obituary tribute to Shaw, ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' concluded:

{{blockquote|He was no originator of ideas. He was an insatiable adopter and adapter, an incomparable prestidigitator with the thoughts of the forerunners. [[Nietzsche]], [[Samuel Butler (novelist)|Samuel Butler]] (''[[Erewhon]]''), Marx, [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]], [[William Blake|Blake]], [[Dickens]], William Morris, Ruskin, [[Beethoven]] and Wagner all had their applications and misapplications. By bending to their service all the faculties of a powerful mind, by inextinguishable wit, and by every artifice of argument, he carried their thoughts as far as they would reach—so far beyond their sources that they came to us with the vitality of the newly created.{{sfn|Tomlinson|1950|p=709}}}}

== Notes ==
{{Reflist|35em|group=n}}

== References ==
=== Citations ===
{{reflist|25em}}

=== Sources ===
==== Books ====
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book |last=Adams |first=Elsie Bonita |title=Bernard Shaw and the Aesthetes |year=1971 |location=Columbus |publisher=Ohio State University Press |isbn=978-0-8142-0155-8 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/bernardshawaesth0000adam }}
* {{cite book |last=Adelman |first=Paul |title=The Rise of the Labour Party 1880–1945 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v1igBAAAQBAJ |year=1996 |location=Abingdon, Oxfordshire |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-582-29210-9 }}
* {{cite book |last=Bennett |first=Richard |title=The Black and Tans |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AiTOAwAAQBAJ |publisher=Pen & Sword Books |location=Barnsley, Yorkshire |year= 2010 |isbn=978-1-84884-384-4 }}
* {{cite book |last=Bentley |first=Eric |title=What is Theatre? |year=1968 |location=New York |publisher=Atheneum |oclc=237869445 }}
* {{harvc |last=Berst |first=Charles |chapter=New theatres for old|in=Innes|year=1998}}
* {{cite book |last=Bevir |first=Mark |title=The Making of British Socialism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sHnKETt0cx4C |year=2011 |location=Princeton, New Jersey |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-15083-3 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Broad |first1=Charlie Lewis |last2=Broad |first2=Violet M. |title=Dictionary to the Plays and Novels of Bernard Shaw |publisher=Haskell House |year=1929 |location=New York |oclc=2410241 |ref={{sfnRef|Broad and Broad 1929}}}}
* {{cite book |last1=Burton |first1=Alan |last2=Chibnall |first2=Steve |title=Historical Dictionary of British Cinema |location=London |publisher=Scarecrow Press |year=2013 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q8SRjwJqwukC&pg=PR24 |isbn=978-0-8108-8026-9 |ref={{sfnRef|Burton and Chibnall 2013}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Carr |first=Pat |title=Bernard Shaw |year=1976 |location=New York |publisher=Ungar |oclc=2073986 }}
* {{cite book |last=Clare |first=David |title=Bernard Shaw's Irish Outlook |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aQtfCwAAQBAJ |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=Basingstoke, Hampshire |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-349-55433-1 }}
* {{cite book |author-link=Margaret Cole |last=Cole |first=Margaret |title=Growing up into Revolution |url=https://archive.org/details/growingupintorev0000cole |url-access=registration |year=1949 |location=London and New York |publisher=Longmans, Green |oclc=186313752 }}
* {{cite book |last=Cole |first=Margaret |title=The Story of Fabian Socialism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8i2sAAAAIAAJ |year=1961 |location=London |publisher=Heinemann |oclc=314706123 |isbn=978-0-8047-0091-7 }}
* {{cite book |last=Conolly |first=L. W. |chapter=Introduction |title=Bernard Shaw: "Mrs Warren's Profession" |year=2005 |location=Peterborough, Ontario |publisher=Broadview Press |isbn=978-1-55111-627-3 }}
* {{cite book |last=Cooper |first=Duff |author-link=Duff Cooper |title=Old Men Forget |year=1953 |location=London |publisher=Rupert Hart-Davis |oclc=5748826 |title-link=Old Men Forget }}
* {{cite book |author-link=Noël Coward |last=Coward |first=Noël |year=2004 |title=Present Indicative – Autobiography to 1931 |orig-year=1932 |location=London |publisher=Methuen |isbn=978-0-413-77413-2 }}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Crawford |first=Fred D. |editor-last=Bertolini |editor-first=John Anthony |title=Shaw's British Inheritors |encyclopedia=Shaw and Other Playwrights |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gRJg5Vmk4fkC |publisher=The Pennsylvania State University Press |location=University Park |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-271-00908-7 }}
* {{cite book |last=Croall |first=Jonathan |title=Sybil Thorndike |year=2008 |location=London |publisher=Haus |isbn=978-1-905791-92-7 }}
* {{cite book |last=Dervin |first=Daniel |title=Bernard Shaw: A Psychological Study |year=1975 |location=Lewisburg, Pennsylvania|publisher=Bucknell University Press |isbn=978-0-8387-1418-8 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/bernardshawpsych0000derv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dukore |first=Bernard F. |chapter=Shaw and American Drama |title=Shaw and the Last Hundred Years |publisher=The Pennsylvania State University Press |location=University Park |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-271-01324-4 }}
* {{cite book |author-link=St. John Greer Ervine |last=Ervine |first=St John |title=Bernard Shaw: His Life, Work and Friends |publisher=Constable |location=London |year=1956 |oclc=37129043 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Drabble |first1=Margaret |last2=Stringer |first2=Jemmy |last3=Hahn |first3=Daniel |url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199214921.001.0001/acref-9780199214921-e-361|chapter=Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch|title=The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-19-921492-1 |ref={{sfnRef|Drabble ''et al.'' 2007 "Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch"}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Evans |first=Judith |title=The Politics and Plays of Bernard Shaw |year=2003 |location=London |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-1323-2 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/politicsplaysofb0000evan }}
* {{cite book |last=Evans |first=T.F. |title=George Bernard Shaw: The Critical Heritage |year=1976 |location=London |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-15953-1 }}
* {{cite book |last=Feinberg |first=Leonard |title=The Satirist |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h5_iJBNKCs8C |publisher=Transaction Publishers |location=New Brunswick, New Jersey |year=2006 |isbn=978-1-4128-0562-9 }}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Gaye |editor-first=Freda |year=1967 |title=Who's Who in the Theatre |edition=fourteenth |location=London |publisher=Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons |oclc=5997224 }}
* {{cite book |last=Griffith |first=Gareth |title=Socialism and Superior Brains: The Political Thought of George Bernard Shaw |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QHaJAgAAQBAJ |year=1993 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=978-0-203-21083-3 }}
* {{cite book |last=Holden |first=Anthony |title=Behind the Oscar: The Secret History of the Academy Awards |year=1993 |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=978-0-671-70129-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/behindoscarsecre00hold }}
* {{cite book |last=Holroyd |first=Michael |title=Bernard Shaw, Volume 1: 1856–1898: The Search for Love |year=1990 |location=London |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-0-14-012441-5 }}
* {{cite book |last=Holroyd |first=Michael |title=Bernard Shaw, Volume 2: 1898–1918: The Pursuit of Power |year=1989 |location=London |publisher=Chatto & Windus |isbn=978-0-7011-3350-4 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/bernardshaw00holr }}
* {{cite book |last=Holroyd |first=Michael |title=Bernard Shaw, Volume 3: 1918–1950: The Lure of Fantasy |year=1993 |location=London |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-0-14-012443-9 }}
* {{cite book |last=Holroyd |first=Michael |title=Bernard Shaw, Volume 4: The Last Laugh |year=1992 |location=London |publisher=Chatto & Windus |isbn=978-0-7011-4583-5 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/bernardshaw00holr }}
* {{cite book |last=Holroyd |first=Michael |title=Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition |year=1997 |location=London |publisher=Chatto & Windus |isbn=978-0-7011-6279-5 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/bernardshaw00holr }}
* {{cite book |last=Hugo |first=Leon |title=Edwardian Shaw: The Writer and his Age |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MH1aCwAAQBAJ&pg=PR13 |publisher=Macmillan |location=London |year=1999 |isbn=978-1-349-40737-8 }}
* {{cite book |last=Innes |first=Christopher|author-link=Christopher Innes|title=The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw |editor=Christopher Innes |year=1998 |location=Cambridge and New York |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-56633-9}}
* {{harvc |last=Innes |first=Christopher|author-link=Christopher Innes|id={{SfnRef|Innes "Introduction"|1998}}|chapter=Introduction|in=Innes|year=1998}}
* {{cite book |last=Kamm |first=Jürgen |title=Twentieth-century Theatre and Drama |year=1999 |location=Trier, Germany |publisher=WVT |isbn=978-3-88476-333-9 |ref= {{sfnRef|Quoted in Kamm 1999}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Kaufmann |first=R.J. |title=G.B. Shaw: A Collection of Critical Essays |year=1965 |location=Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey|publisher=Prentice Hall |oclc=711587 }}
* {{cite book |last=Kavanagh |first=Peter |title=The Story of the Abbey Theatre: From its Origins in 1899 to the Present |year=1950 |location=New York |publisher=Devin-Adair |oclc=757711 }}
* {{cite book |last=Kevles |first=Daniel J. |author-link=Daniel Kevles |title=In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity |isbn=978-0-520-05763-0 |year=1995 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |url=https://archive.org/details/innameofeugenics00kevl }}
* {{cite book |last=Laurence |first=Dan |title=Shaw, Books, and Libraries |year=1976 |location=Austin |publisher=University of Texas |isbn=978-0-87959-022-2 }}
* {{cite book |last=McBriar |first=A. M. |title=Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884–1918 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=olQ4AAAAIAAJ |year=1962 |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |oclc=266090 }}
* {{cite book |last=Mackay |first=James |title=Michael Collins: A Life |publisher=Mainstream Publications |location=Edinburgh |year=1997 |isbn=978-1-85158-949-4 }}
* {{cite book |last=Martin |first=Stanley |title=The Order of Merit |publisher=Taurus |location=London |year=2007 |chapter=George Bernard Shaw |isbn=978-1-86064-848-9 }}
* {{cite book |last=Matthews |first=John F. |title=George Bernard Shaw |year=1969 |location=New York |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-03145-5 }}
* {{cite book |last=O'Donovan |first=John |title=Shaw and the Charlatan Genius |url=https://archive.org/details/shawcharlatangen0000odon |url-access=registration |year=1965 |location=Dublin |publisher=Dolman Press and Oxford University Press |oclc=923954974 }}
* {{cite book |last=Pascal |first=Valerie |title=The Disciple and his Devil: Gabriel Pascal and Bernard Shaw |url=https://archive.org/details/disciplehisdevil0000pasc |url-access=registration |year=1971 |location=London |publisher=Michael Joseph |oclc=740749440 }}
* {{cite book |last=Pearce |first=Joseph |title=Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton |year=1997 |location=London |publisher=Hodder & Stoughton |isbn=978-0-340-69434-3 }}
* {{cite book |author-link=Hesketh Pearson |last=Pearson |first=Hesketh |title=Bernard Shaw |publisher=Four Square Books |location=London |year=1964 |oclc=222140216 }}
* {{cite book |author-link=Henry Pelling |last=Pelling |first=Henry |title=The Origins of the Labour Party |year=1965 |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |oclc=502185 }}
* {{cite book |last=Peters |first=Sally |title=Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman |year=1996 |location=New Haven, CT |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-06097-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/bernardshawascen00pete }}
* {{harvc |last=Peters |first=Sally |chapter=Shaw's life: a feminist in spite of himself|in=Innes|year=1998}}
* {{cite book |last=Pharand |first= Michel |title=Bernard Shaw and the French |year=2000 |location=Gainesville |publisher=University Press of Florida |isbn=978-0-8130-1828-7 }}
* {{harvc |last=Powell |first=Kerry |chapter=New Women, new plays, and Shaw in the 1890s|in=Innes|year=1998|}}
* {{cite book |last=Preece |first=Rod |title=Animal Sensibility and Inclusive Justice in the Age of Bernard Shaw |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P9VkTH4GEusC |year=2011 |location=Vancouver |publisher=UBC Press |isbn=978-0-7748-2109-4 }}
* {{cite book |last=Reed |first=W.H. |author-link=William Henry Reed |title=Elgar |location=London |publisher=Dent |year=1939 |oclc=8858707 }}
* {{cite book |last=Rollins |first=Cyril |year=1962 |author2=R. John Witts |title=The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas: A Record of Productions, 1875–1961 |location=London |publisher=Michael Joseph |oclc=504581419 |ref={{sfnRef|Rollins and Witts 1962}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Rosset |first=Benjamin |title=Shaw of Dublin: The Formative Years |url=https://archive.org/details/shawofdublinform0000ross |url-access=registration |year=1964 |location=University Park |publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press |oclc=608833 }}
* {{cite book |last=Searle |first=Geoffrey Russell |title=Eugenics and Politics in Britain, 1900–1914 |publisher=Noordhoff International |location=Groningen, Netherlands |year=1976 |isbn=978-90-286-0236-6 }}
* {{cite book |last=Shepherd |first=John |title=George Lansbury |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2002 |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-820164-9 }}
* {{cite book |last=Smith |first=Adrian |title=The New Statesman: Portrait of a Political Weekly 1913–1931 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nhMCAwAAQBAJ |publisher=Routledge |location=London |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-7146-4645-9 }}
* {{cite book |last=Tyson |first=Brian |title=The Story of Shaw's ''Saint Joan'' |year=1982 |publisher=McGill-Queen's Press |location=Montreal |isbn=978-0-7735-8513-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=us9pyujsNooC&pg=PA116 }}
* {{cite book |last=Valency |first=Maurice |title=The Cart and the Trumpet: The Plays of George Bernard Shaw |url=https://archive.org/details/carttrumpet00maur |url-access=registration |year=1973 |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |oclc=248056662 }}
* {{cite book |last=Wearing |first=J.P. |title=The London Stage, 1910–1919: A Calendar of Plays and Players |year=1982 |location=Metuchen, New Jersey|publisher=Scarecrow Press |isbn=978-0-8108-1596-4 }}
* {{cite book |last=Weintraub |first=Stanley |title=The Unexpected Shaw |year=1982 |location=New York |publisher=Ungar |isbn=978-0-8044-2974-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/unexpectedshawbi0000wein }}
* {{harvc |last=Wikander |first=Martin |chapter=Reinventing the history play|in=Innes|year=1998}}
* {{harvc |last=Wisenthal |first=J. L. |chapter=Shaw's plays as music-drama|in=Innes|year=1998}}
* {{cite book |last=Yde |first=Matthew |title=Bernard Shaw and Totalitarianism: Longing for Utopia |year=2013 |location=New York |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-1-137-33020-8 }}
* {{cite book |last=Young |first=Percy |title=Elgar O.M. |year=1973 |location=London |publisher=White Lion |isbn=978-0-85617-333-2 }}
{{refend}}

==== Shaw's writings ====
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |title=A Manifesto ''(Fabian Tract No. 2)'' |url=https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/Documents/Detail/a-manifesto-1884/89952 |publisher=Grant Richards |location=London |year=1884 |oclc=4674581 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw: ''A Manifesto'' 1884}}}}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Shaw |editor-first=Bernard |title=Fabian Essays in Socialism |url=https://archive.org/stream/fabianessaysinso00fabirich#page/n7/mode/2up |publisher=The Fabian Society |location=London |year=1889 |oclc=867941203 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw: Fabian Essays in Socialism 1889}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |title=What Socialism Is ''(Fabian Tract No. 13)'' |url= https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/Documents/Detail/what-socialism-is-1890/90886 |publisher=Grant Richards |location=London |year=1890 |oclc=4674562 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw: ''What Socialism Is'' 1890}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |title=Fabianism and the Empire |url=https://archive.org/details/fabianismempirem00shawuoft |publisher=Grant Richards |location=London |year=1900 |oclc=2688559 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw: ''Fabianism and the Empire'' 1900}}}}
* {{cite news |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |title=Common Sense About the War |url=https://archive.org/stream/commonsenseabou00shawgoog#page/n22/mode/2up |work=Current History of the European War |publisher=The New York Times |volume=1 |issue=1 |date=December 1914 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw: ''Common Sense About the War'' 1914}}}}
* {{cite news |last=Shaw |first=G. Bernard |title=Irish Nonsense About Ireland |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1916/04/09/104022367.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106193044/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1916/04/09/104022367.pdf |archive-date=6 November 2018 |url-status=live |newspaper=The New York Times |date=9 April 1916 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw: "Irish Nonsense About Ireland" 1916}}}}
* {{cite book |last= Shaw |first=Bernard |title=The League of Nations ''Fabian Tract No. 226'' |url=https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/Documents/Detail/the-league-of-nations-1929/99577 |publisher=The Fabian Society |location=London |year=1929 |oclc=612985 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw: ''The League of Nations'' 1929 }}}}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |title=The Complete Plays of Bernard Shaw |year=1934 |location=London |publisher=Odhams |oclc=492566054 }}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |title=Everybody's Political What's What |publisher=Constable |year=1944 |location=London |oclc=892140394 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw: ''Everybody's Political What's What'' 1944}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |title=Sixteen Self Sketches |chapter=Biographers' Blunders Corrected |year=1949 |location=London |publisher=Constable |oclc=185519922 }}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |editor=Dan Laurence |title=Collected Letters, Volume 1: 1874–1897 |year=1965 |location=London |publisher=Reinhardt |oclc=185512253 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw and Laurence 1965}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |editor=Stanley Weintraub |title=Shaw: An Autobiography, 1856–1898 |year=1969 |location=London |publisher=Reinhardt |isbn=978-0-370-01328-2 }}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |editor=Dan Laurence |year=1981 |title=Shaw's Music: The Complete Music Criticism of Bernard Shaw, Volume 1 (1876–1890) |location=London | publisher= The Bodley Head |isbn=978-0-370-30247-8 |ref= {{sfnRef|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 1) 1981}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |editor=Dan Laurence |year=1981 |title=Shaw's Music: The Complete Music Criticism of Bernard Shaw, Volume 2 (1890–1893) |location=London | publisher=The Bodley Head |isbn=978-0-370-30249-2 |ref= {{sfnRef|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 2) 1981}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |editor=Dan Laurence |year=1981 |title=Shaw's Music: The Complete Music Criticism of Bernard Shaw, Volume 3 (1893–1950) |location=London | publisher=The Bodley Head |isbn=978-0-370-30248-5 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw and Laurence (Vol 3) 1981}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |editor-last=Crawford |editor-first=Fred D. |chapter=Shaw's advice to Irishmen |title=Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, Volume 18 |publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press |location=University Park, Pennsylvania|year=1998 |pages=63–66 |isbn=978-0-271-01779-2 |jstor=40681536 }}
* {{cite web |last=Shaw |first=Bernard |title=''On the Rocks'' (ebook)|url=http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300561h.html |year=2003 |publisher=Project Gutenberg Australia |access-date=13 February 2016 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw: Preface, ''On the Rocks'' (Section: "Previous Attempts miss the Point") 1933}}}}
{{refend}}

==== Journals ====
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last=Alexander |first=Doris M. |title=Captain Brant and Captain Brassbound: The Origin of an O'Neill Character |jstor=3040068 |journal=[[Modern Language Notes]] |volume=74 |issue=4 |date=April 1959 |pages=306–310 }}
* {{cite journal |last=Beerbohm |first=Max |title=Mr Shaw's Profession |journal=[[The Shaw Review]]|volume=5 |issue=1 |date=January 1962 |pages=5–9 |jstor=40681959 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Bosch |first=Marianne |title=Mother, Sister, and Wife in ''The Millionairess'' |journal=[[Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies]]|volume=4 |date=1984 |pages=113–127 |jstor=40681122 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Broughton |first=Philip S. |title=Book Review: The Crime of Imprisonment |journal=[[American Journal of Public Health]]|volume=36 |issue=7 |date=July 1946 |page=808 |doi=10.2105/AJPH.36.7.808-a|pmc=1625829 }}
* {{cite journal |last=Crawford |first=Fred D. |title=Journals to Stella |journal=The Shaw Review |volume=18 |issue=3 |date=September 1975 |pages=93–109 |jstor=40682408 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Crawford |first=Fred D. |title=Bernard Shaw's Theory of Literary Art |journal=[[Journal of General Education]]|volume=34 |issue=1 |date=Spring 1982 |page=20 }}
* {{cite journal |last=Crawford |first=Fred D. |title=The Shaw Diaries |journal=Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies |date=1988 |volume=8 |pages=139–143 |jstor=40681240 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Crawford |first=Fred D. |title=Ways Pleasant and Unpleasant: Collected Letters Four |journal=Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies |date=1990 |volume=10 |pages=148–154|jstor=40681299 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Dukore |first=Bernard |title=From Symposium: What May Lie Ahead for Shaw After the First Hundred Years? |journal=Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies |volume=14 |date=1994 |pages=265–276 |jstor=40655127 |ref={{sfnRef|Dukore ''et al.'' 1994}} |display-authors=etal }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Gahan |first=Peter |title=Bernard Shaw and the Irish Literary Tradition |journal=Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies |volume=30 |date=2010 |pages=1–26 |jstor=10.5325/shaw.30.1.0001 |doi=10.5325/shaw.30.1.0001 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Geduld |first=H. M. |author-link1=Harry M. Geduld |title=Bernard Shaw and Adolf Hitler |jstor=40682385 |journal=The Shaw Review |date=January 1961 |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=11–20 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Hoffsten |first=Ernest |title=The Plays of Bernard Shaw |jstor=27530625 |journal=[[The Sewanee Review]]| volume= 12|issue= 2|date= 2 April 1904|pages= 217–222 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Kent |first=Brad |title=The Banning of George Bernard Shaw's 'The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God' and the Decline of the Irish Academy of Letters |jstor=40344299 |journal=Irish University Review |volume=38 |issue=2 |date=Autumn 2008 |pages=274–291 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |editor-last=Laurence |editor-first=Dan |title=The Blanco Posnet Controversy |journal=Shaw Society of America Bulletin |date=January 1955 |pages=1–9 |jstor=40681313 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Laurence |first=Dan |title='That Awful Country': Shaw in America |journal=Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies |volume=5 |date=1985 |pages=279–297|jstor=40681161 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Leary |first=Daniel J. |title=How Shaw Destroyed his Irish Biographer |url=http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6309312_021/ldpd_6309312_021.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150929020947/http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6309312_021/ldpd_6309312_021.pdf |archive-date=29 September 2015 |url-status=live |journal=Columbia Library Columns |volume=21 |issue=2 |date=November 1971 |pages=3–11 }}
* {{cite magazine |title=All Honor to his Genius; But his Message is Irrelevant to our Problems Today |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kEkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA26 |magazine=[[Life (magazine)|Life]]|date=12 August 1946 |page=26 |ref={{sfnRef|''Life'' editorial: "All honor to his genius&nbsp;...", 12 August 1946}} |author=Time Inc.}}
* {{cite journal |last=Merriman |first=Victor |title=Shaw in Contemporary Irish Studies: Passé or Contemptible? |jstor=10.5325/shaw.30.1.0216 |journal=[[Shaw (journal)|Shaw]]|volume=30 |year=2010 |pages=216–235 |doi=10.5325/shaw.30.1.0216 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Morgan |first=L. N. |title=Bernard Shaw the Playwright |jstor=40089890 |journal=[[Books Abroad]]|volume=25 |issue=2 |date=Spring 1951 |pages=100–104 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Nothorcot |first=Arthur |title=A Plea for ''Bernard'' Shaw |journal=The Shaw Review |volume=7 |issue=1 |date=January 1964 |pages=2–9 |jstor=40682015 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Pierce |first=Robert B. |title=Bernard Shaw as Shakespeare Critic |journal=Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies |volume=31 |issue=1 |date=2011 |pages=118–132 |jstor=10.5325/shaw.31.1.0118 |doi=10.5325/shaw.31.1.0118 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite magazine |date=4 December 1950 |title=Religion: Creative Revolutionary |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |url=http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,813999,00.html |ref={{sfnRef|Religion: Creative Revolutionary: ''Time'', December 1950}}}}
* {{cite journal |last=Rodenbeck |first=John |title=The Irrational Knot: Shaw and The Uses of Ibsen |jstor=40682171 |journal=The Shaw Review |volume=12 |issue=2 |date=May 1969 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Sharp |first=William |title='Getting Married' New Dramaturgy in Comedy |journal=[[Educational Theatre Journal]]|volume=11 |issue=2 |date=May 1959 |pages=103–109 |jstor=3204732 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Sloan |first=Gary |title=The Religion of George Bernard Shaw: When is an Atheist? |url=http://www.liberator.net/articles/SloanGary/Shaw.html |journal=American Atheist |date=Autumn 2004 |access-date=18 February 2016 |ref={{sfnRef|Sloan: The religion of George Bernard Shaw 2004}}}}
* {{cite journal |last=Wallis |first=Eric |year=1991 |title=The Intelligent Woman's Guide: Some Contemporary Opinions |jstor=40681331 |journal=Shaw: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies |volume=11 |pages=185–193}}
* {{cite journal |last=Weales |first=Gerald |title=A Hand at Shaw's Curtain |journal=[[The Hudson Review]] |volume=19 |issue=Autumn 1966 |pages=518–522 |jstor=3849269 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Weales |first=Gerald |title=Shaw as Screenwriter |journal=The Shaw Review |volume=12 |issue=2 |date=May 1969 |pages=80–82 |jstor=40682173 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Weintraub |first=Stanley |title=Shaw's Musician: Edward Elgar |journal=Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies |date=2002 |volume=22 |pages=1–88 |url=http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shaw/summary/v022/22.1weintraub.html |doi=10.1353/shaw.2002.0017 |url-access=subscription }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Weintraub |first=Stanley |title=GBS and the Despots |url=http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/george-bernard-shaw-and-the-despots/ |journal=[[The Times Literary Supplement]]|date=22 August 2011 |access-date=4 February 2016 |ref={{sfnRef|Weintraub: "GBS and the Despots", 22 August 2011}}}}
* {{cite journal |last=West |first=E.J. |title=The Critic as Analyst: Bernard Shaw as Example |jstor=3203744 |journal=Educational Theatre Journal |volume=4 |issue=3 |date=October 1952 |pages=200–205 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite journal |last=Westrup |first=Sir Jack |author-link=Jack Westrup |title=Shaw and the Charlatan Genius |journal=[[Music & Letters]] |date=January 1966 |volume=47 |issue=1 |pages=57–58 |jstor=732134 }} {{subscription}}
{{refend}}

====Newspapers====
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite news |title=At the Play: Mr Shaw's ''Major Barbara'' |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/480484228 |newspaper=The Observer |page=5 |date=3 December 1905 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Observer'', 3 December 1905}}}} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |title=Avenue Theatre |newspaper=The Standard |location=London |page=2 |date=29 April 1894 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Standard'', 23 April 1894}}}}
* {{cite news |last=Ervine |first=St John |title=At the Play: Mr Shaw In Despair |page=11 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/480796893 |newspaper=The Observer |date=23 October 1921 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |last=Ervine |first=St John |page=11 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/481077190 |title=At the Play: ''Back To Methuselah'' |newspaper=The Observer |date=14 October 1923 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |title=''Heartbreak House'' |newspaper=The Times |date=19 October 1921 |page=8 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Times'', 19 October 1921}}}}
* {{cite news |title=''Heartbreak House'' in New York |newspaper=[[The Times]]|date=12 November 1920 |page=11 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Times'', 12 November 1920}}}}
* {{cite news |last=Holroyd |first=Michael |title=Abuse of Shaw's literary legacy |newspaper=The Times |page=1 |date= 7 April 1992 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Times'', 7 April 1992}}}}
* {{cite news |last=Holroyd |first=Michael |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/jul/13/george-bernard-shaw-doctors-dilemma |title=Bernard Shaw and his lethally absurd doctor's dilemma |newspaper=The Guardian |date=13 July 2012}}
* {{cite news |last=Janes |first=Daniel |title=The Shavian Moment |newspaper=New Statesman |date=20 July 2012 |url=http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2012/07/shavian-moment |ref={{sfnRef|Janes, ''New Statesman'', 20 July 2012}}}}
* {{cite news |last=Kennedy |first=Maev |title=George Bernard Shaw photographs uncover man behind myth |newspaper=The Guardian |date=5 July 2011 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jul/05/george-bernard-shaw-photographs-exhibitions |ref={{sfnRef|Kennedy, ''The Guardian'', 5 July 2011}}}}
* {{cite news |last=Lawson |first=Mark |title=Timing is everything: how plays find their moments |newspaper=The Guardian |date=11 July 2012 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/jul/11/timing-everything-plays-transformed-current-events |ref={{sfnRef|Lawson, ''The Guardian'', 11 July 2012}}}}
* {{cite news |title=Mr Bernard Shaw's £367,000 Estate |newspaper=The Times |date=24 March 1951 |page=8 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Times'', 24 March 1951}}}}
* {{cite news |title=Mr Shaw's Play |newspaper=The Times |date=15 October 1923 |page=10 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Times'', 15 October 1923}}}}
* {{cite news |title=Mr Shaw's ''Saint Joan'' |newspaper=The Times |date=29 December 1923 |page=8 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Times'', 9 December 1923}}}}
* {{cite news |title=''Mrs Warren's Profession'' |page=12 |newspaper=The Times |date=29 September 1925 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Times'', 29 September 1925}}}}
* {{cite news |title=Mrs Pat Campbell Here |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1914/10/10/100329091.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106205343/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1914/10/10/100329091.pdf |archive-date=6 November 2018 |url-status=live |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=10 October 1914 |ref={{sfnRef|''The New York Times'', 10 October 1914}}}} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |last=Nestruck |first=J. Kelly |title=Was George Bernard Shaw a Monster? |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/theatre-and-performance/was-george-bernard-shaw-a-monster/article585209/?page=all |newspaper=The Globe and Mail |location=Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario |date=1 July 2011}}
* {{cite news |title=News Report |newspaper=The New York Times |url=http://walterschafer.com/atimesofshaw/articles/1933.html#0879 |date=10 December 1933 |access-date=13 February 2016 |ref={{sfnRef|''The New York Times'', 10 December 1933}}}}
* {{cite news |title=New Theatre |newspaper=The Times |page=12 |date=27 March 1924 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Times'', 27 March 1924}}}}
* {{cite news |last=Osborne |first=John |title=Superman? A look back in anguish |url= https://www.proquest.com/docview/185903266 |newspaper=The Guardian |date=23 June 1977 |p=12 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |last=Owen |first=Richard |title=Shaw's secret fair lady revealed at last |page=3 |newspaper=The Times |date=14 June 2004}}
* {{cite news |last=Rhodes |first=Crompton |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/476788917 |title=''Back To Methuselah'' at Birmingham |page=8 |newspaper=The Manchester Guardian |date=16 October 1923 }} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |title=Shaw's ''Pygmalion'' Has Come to Town |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1914/10/13/archives/shaws-pygmalion-has-come-to-town-with-mrs-campbell-delightful-as-a.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=13 October 1914 |p=11 |ref={{sfnRef|''The New York Times'', 13 October 1914}}}} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |title=Social Conditions in Russia: Recent Visitor's Tribute |url=http://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/bernard_shaw.htm |newspaper=The Manchester Guardian |date=2 March 1933 |access-date=4 February 2016 |ref={{sfnRef|Shaw et al.: "Social Conditions in Russia", 2 March 1933}}}}
* {{cite news |title=The Avenue Theatre: ''Arms and the Man'' |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/473809555 |newspaper=The Observer |date=22 April 1894 |page=5 |ref={{sfnRef| ''The Observer'', 22 April 1894}}}} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |title=''The Doctor's Dilemma'': Mr Bernard Shaw's New Play |newspaper=The Manchester Guardian |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/474608009 |page=7 |date=21 November 1906 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Manchester Guardian'', 21 November 1906}}}} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |title=The Modest Shaw Again |newspaper=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1913/11/23/archives/the-modest-shaw-again-explains-in-his-shrinking-way-why-pygmalion.html |page=X6 |date=23 November 1913 |ref={{sfnRef|''The New York Times'', 23 November 1913}}}} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |title=The Drama |page=2 |newspaper=The Daily News |date=1 April 1895 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Daily News'', 1 April 1895}}}}
* {{cite news |title=Things Theatrical |newspaper=The Sporting Times |page=3 |date=19 May 1894 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Sporting Times'', 19 May 1894}}}}
* {{cite news |last=Tomlinson |first=Philip |title=Bernard Shaw: Obituary |newspaper=The Times Literary Supplement |location=London |pages=709–710 |date=10 November 1950}}
* {{cite news |title=''Too True to Be Good'' – Mr G. B. Shaw's New Play – America Sees it First |page=9 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/478400351 |newspaper=The Manchester Guardian |date=2 March 1932 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Manchester Guardian'', 2 March 1932}}}} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |title=Vedrenne-Barker Plays: Famous Partnership Dissolved |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/480433630 |page=8 |newspaper=The Observer |date=8 March 1908 |ref={{sfnRef|''The Observer'', 8 March 1908}}}} {{subscription}}
* {{cite news |title=Waftings from the Wings |page=179 |newspaper=Fun |location=London |date=1 May 1894 |ref={{sfnRef|''Fun'', 1 May 1894}}}}
{{refend}}

====Online====
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite web |last=Anderson |first=Robert |url=http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/25600 |title=Shaw, Bernard |publisher=Grove Music Online |access-date=1 January 2016 |ref={{sfnRef|Anderson: ''Grove Music Online''}} }}
* {{cite web |last=Diniejko |first=Andrzej |title=The Fabian Society in Late Victorian Britain |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/history/fabian.html |publisher=The Victorian Web |date=September 2013 |access-date=24 January 2016 }}
* {{cite journal |last=Ervine |first=St John |title=Shaw, George Bernard (1856–1950) |journal=Dictionary of National Biography Archive |year=1959 |ref={{sfnRef|Ervine 1959 DNB archive}} |doi=10.1093/odnb/9780192683120.013.36047}} {{ODNBsub}}
* {{cite web |title=Fabian Tracts: 1884–1901 |url=https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/list/collections/16 |publisher=LSE Digital Library |access-date=24 January 2016 |ref={{sfnRef|Fabian Tracts: 1884–1901}} }}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Grene |first=Nicholas |title=Shaw, George Bernard |encyclopedia=Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance |year=2003 |ref={{sfnRef|Grene 2003 ''Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre''}} |doi=10.1093/acref/9780198601746.001.0001 |isbn=978-0-19-860174-6 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordencycloped0002unse_e9d3 }}
* {{cite book |title=Love Among the Artists |oclc=489748 |publisher=H.S. Stone and Company |first=Bernard |last=Shaw |ref={{sfnRef|''Love Among the Artists'': WorldCat}}}}
* {{cite web |title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 1925 |work=Nobelprize.org |publisher=Nobel Media AB |date=2014 |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1925/ |access-date=27 July 2014 |ref={{sfnRef|The Nobel Prize in Literature 1925}} }}
* {{cite web |last=Pharand |first=Michael |url=http://www.shawsociety.org/ShawChro_2015.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160121222106/http://www.shawsociety.org/ShawChro_2015.pdf |archive-date=21 January 2016 |url-status=live |title=A Chronology of Works By and About Bernard Shaw |work=Bernard Shaw |publisher=Shaw Society |year=2015 |access-date=13 February 2016 |ref={{sfnRef|Pharand: Shaw chronology 2015}} }}
* {{cite web |title=Shaw, George Bernard: 1856–1950 |url=https://www.swisseduc.ch/english/readinglist/shaw_gb/ |publisher=Verein SwissEduc |access-date=19 December 2019<!-- |ref={{sfnRef|"Shaw, George Bernard: 1856–1950". Verein SwissEduc}} Not cited.--> }}
* {{cite ODNB|first=Stanley|last=Weintraub|title=Shaw, George Bernard|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/36047|date=3 October 2013|url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-36047/version/6}}
* {{cite web |last=Weintraub |first=Stanley |url=http://www.shawsociety.org/Weintraub%27s-Shaw-Societies.htm |title=Shaw Societies: Once and Now |publisher=The Shaw Society |access-date=18 February 2016 |ref={{sfnRef|Weintraub: Shaw Societies Once and Now}} |archive-date=21 December 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161221034744/http://www.shawsociety.org/Weintraub%27s-Shaw-Societies.htm |url-status=dead }}
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{Sister project links|auto=yes|d=Q19185}}
{{Library resources box}}
* {{Gutenberg author|id=467|name=Shaw}} (About 50 ebooks of Shaw's works and some additional Shaw-related material)
* {{FadedPage|id=Shaw, Bernard|name=Shaw|author=yes}}
* {{Internet Archive author|sname=Shaw|name=Shaw}} (More links to Shaw-related material)
* {{Librivox author|id=603|title=Shaw}}
* {{IBDB name|id=5784|name=Shaw}} (Information on Broadway productions, 1894 to present)
* {{IMDb name|id=0789737|name=Shaw}} (Lists all film and TV versions of Shaw's works since 1921)
* [https://archives.lse.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=SHAW+PHOTOGRAPHS Shaw photographs held at LSE Library]
* [http://www.shawsociety.org/ International Shaw Society]
* [http://www.shawsociety.org.uk/ The Shaw Society, UK, established in 1941]
* [http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/shawsociety.html The Bernard Shaw Society, New York]
* [http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingaid.cfm?eadid=00121p1 Shaw collection] at the [http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/ Harry Ransom Center] at [[The University of Texas at Austin]]
* {{PM20|FID=pe/016422|NAME=Shaw}}
* {{cite TIWW |article=Shaw, Bernard |pages=229–230}}

{{s-start}}
{{s-ach}}
{{s-bef|before=[[Anton Lang]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[List of covers of Time magazine (1920s)|Cover of ''Time'']]
|years=24 December 1923}}
{{s-aft|after=[[Anthony Fokker]]}}
{{s-end}}

{{George Bernard Shaw}}
{{Navboxes
| title = Awards for George Bernard Shaw
| list =
{{AcademyAwardBestAdaptedScreenplay 1928–1940}}
{{Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates 1901–1925}}
{{1925 Nobel Prize winners}}
}}
{{London School of Economics}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaw, George Bernard}}
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