George Bernard Shaw

Short biography of George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, 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 (1912) and 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, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he established himself as a writer and novelist. By the mid-1880s he was a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the 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 and Caesar and Cleopatra. Pygmalion was his best-known play, which was a great success in London and New York. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanising processes of modernity. In 1938 he provided the screenplay for a filmed version of Pygmalion, for which he received an Academy Award. He continued to write prolifically into his eighties. Themes which earn Shaw’s works a place among literature’s great discussion of some of the profoundest problems in contemporary philosophy are the function of art and the nature of the artist in society, the open society and its enemies, the purpose of education, the relationship between religion and science, the politics of power and the ethics of war.

Shaw died at his home on 2 November 1950, aged 94, having suffered from cerebral thrombosis. Although he made clear his desire to be buried in Dublin, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, the first person of neither noble nor royal ancestry to be given that honour since the burial of Sir Isaac Newton in 1727.

General Essay Structure for this Topic

1. George Bernard Shaw: A Brief Overview
2. The Early Years: Family and Education
3. Shaw’s First Forays into Writing
4. The Development of Shaw’s Political Ideology
5. Shaw as a Playwright
6. Shaw’s Major Themes
7. The Reception of Shaw’s Work
8. Shaw’s Legacy
9. George Bernard Shaw in His Own Words
10. Further Reading on George Bernard Shaw