Biography
Innate within Dublin, Ireland to rather unfortunate Protestant parents, Shaw was educated at Wesley College, Dublin and moved to London during the 1870s to embark on his literary career. He wrote 5 novels, all of which were rejected, prior to choosing his number 1 profits as a music critic on the Star newspaper. Meanwhile he experienced turn into included within politics, & served as a local council member in the St Pancras district of London for several years from either 1897. He was the noted socialist who took a leading role in the Fabian Society.

Within 1895, he became the theater critic of the Saturday Read, & this was the foremost step within his progress towards a lifespan's operate as a playwright. Around 1898, he married an Irish heiress, Charlotte Payne-Townshend. His foremost successful play, Candida, was produced in the equivalent season. He followed this higher by using the series of classic comedy-dramas, including ''The Devil's Disciple (1897), Arms and the Man (1898), Mrs Warren's Profession (1898), Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1900), Man and Superman (1902), Caesar and Cleopatra (1901), Major Barbara (1905), Androcles and the Lion (1912), and Pygmalion (1913). Fallowing World War I, on which he took the controversial stance, he produced other good dramas, including Grief Home (1919) and Saint Joan'' (1923). The characteristic of Shaw's promulgated plays is the prolonged foreword that accompany the children. Within these essays, Shaw wrote supplementary just just about his ordinarily controversial opinions on a issues touched per plays than about the plays themselves. Occasionally foreword come very much yearn than a actual play.

A political turmoil within his native united states did non leave him untouched. He is said to keep close at hand commented on a Easter Rising that not plenty slum homes were destroyed that st& been rebuilt, and he campaigned against a executions of the rebel leaders. Shaw became the household friend of the Cork-born IRA leader Michael Collins, whom he invited to his home for dinner when Collins was negotiating a Anglo-Irish Treaty with Lloyd-George in London. Fallowing Collins' assassination around 1922, Shaw sent the home message of commiseration to one of Collins' sisters.

Shaw's correspondence with Mrs. Patrick Campbell was adapted for the stage by Jerome Kilty as DEAR LIAR: A Comedy of Letters. His letters to an additional large actress, Ellen Terry, have besides been published & dramatised.

Per instance of his dying, Shaw was non single the personal title inside Britain, but the globe figure. His ironic wit endowed a language sustaining a adjective "Shavian", to refer to such clever observations when "England and America are two countries divided by a common language." [http://www.worldandi.com/newhome/public/2003/may/bkpub.asp]

Despite the fact that he was a democratic socialist, in the 1930s Shaw approved of the dictatorship of Stalin and also processed a few ambiguous statements that can be interpreted when existence pro-Hitler. Inside 1945 in his preface to his play Geneva Shaw claimed that a majority of the those of the Nazi extermination camps had in fact died of "overcrowding". Notwithstanding, he besides stated that Hitler got be the "mad messiah" on top period: Shaw contrasted this by owning a situation in the Soviet Union where, according to Shaw, "Stalin... made good by doing things better and much more promptly than parliaments". Shaw besides manufactured many anti-antisemitic comments at this period, although a extent to which he was just existence ironic or even provocative is unreadable. His (un-ironic) pro-Stalwithin bias is undeniable, notwithstanding, although these are seldom commented in in discussions of his operate. Peradventure a kindest way of seeking at Shaw's political position is that he remained around numbers of ways an Edwardian who never fully understood the politics of the totalitarian age.

Caring just about a inconsistency of English spelling, he willed the part of his wealth to fund a creation of a fresh phonemic alphabet for the English language. In his dying bed, he did non keep around lot money to leave thus there is no effort was manufactured to begin such the plan. But, his estate began to earn important royalties from either a rights to Pygmalion while My Fair Lady, a musical based on the play, became the hit. It & then became clear that the may was so badly worded that the relatives got evidence to challenge a might and in the prevent an away from court personal injury settlement granted a little part of the money to promoting a freshly alphabet. This became called a Shavian alphabet. A National Gallery of Ireland also received a material donation.

Shaw got an extended instance friendly relationship with Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the Catholic-convert British writer, and there are many humorous stories about their complicated relationship. An additional neat friend was a composer Edward Elgar. Shaw is the sole human ever to keep around won each the Nobel Prize (Literature within 1925) and an Academy Award (Best Screenplay for Pygmalion inside 1938).

From either 1906 until his death within 1950 at the age of 94 from either natural is the causal agent of, Shaw lived at Shaw's Corner in the small village of Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire. the home is today a National Trust property, open to the public.

A Shaw Theatre, Euston Road, London was opened around 1971 to honour G.B. Shaw.

Quotes
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." "Whilst we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells." "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." "Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." "Most people would rather die sooner than think. In fact, they do so." "Lack of money is the root of all evil." "Youth is wasted on the young." "Democracy is a system ensuring that the people are governed no better than they deserve." "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize." "The main difference between the opposition of Islam to Hinduism and the opposition between Protestant and Catholic is that the Catholic persecutes as fiercely as the Protestant when he has the power; but Hinduism cannot persecute, because all the Gods---and what goes deeper, the no Gods---are to be found in its Temples." "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality." (To the woman world health organization wrote to him that she treasured to use at times tikes sustaining him because, she was beautiful & he was super hurt. So, their tykes would exist as hurt & beautiful.) "What if our children are as ugly as I am and as silly as you are?" "Irish history is something no Englishman should forget and no Irishman should remember." "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."

Works
Dramatic
(Uncomplete) Plays Unpleasant: ''Widowers' Houses (1892) The Philanderer (1898) Mrs. Warren's Profession (1898) Plays Pleasant: The Man of Destiny (1897) Arms and the Man (1898) Candida (1898) You Never Can Tell (1898) 3 Plays for Puritans: The Devil's Disciple (1897) Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1900) Caesar and Cleopatra (1901) Man and Superman (1902) John Bull's Other Island (1904) Major Barbara (1905) The Doctor's Dilemma (1906) Getting Married (1908) Fanny's First Play (1911) Androcles and the Lion (1912) Pygmalion (1913) Heartbreak House (1919) Back to Methuselah (1921) In the Beginning The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas The Thing Happens Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman As Far as Thought Can Reach Saint Joan (1923) The Apple Cart (1929) Geneva Misalliance

Novels & collections of essays
Commonsense about the War The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism The Black Girl in Search of God

Music criticism
The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring, 1923''