George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, where he grew up in something close to genteel poverty. His father, George Carr Shaw, was in the wholesale grain trade. Lucinda Elisabeth (Gurly) Shaw, his mother, was the daughter of an impoverished landowner. George Carr was a drunkard—his example prompted his son to become a teetotaller. When he died in 1885, his children and wife did not attend his funeral. Young Shaw and his two sisters were brought up mostly by servants. Shaw’s mother eventually left the family home to teach music, singing, in London. She died in 1913.
In 1866 the family moved to a better neighbourhood. Shaw went to the Wesleyan Connexional School, then moved to a private school near Dalkey, and from there to Dublin’s Central Model School. Shaw finished his formal education at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. At the age of 15, he started to work as a junior clerk. In 1876 he went to London, joining his sister and mother. Shaw did not return to Ireland for nearly thirty years.
Most of the next two years Shaw educated himself at the British Museum. He began his literary career by writing music and drama criticism, and novels, including the semi-autobiographical Immaturity, without much success. A vegetarian, who eschewed alcohol and tobacco, Shaw joined in 1884 the Fabian Society, served on its executive committee from 1885 to 1911. The middle-class socialist group attracted also H.G. Wells—the both writers send each other copies of their new books as they appeared.
A man of many causes, Shaw supported abolition of private property, radical change in the voting system, campaigned for the simplification of spelling, and the reform of the English alphabet. As a public speaker, Shaw gained the status of one of the most sought-after orators in England. In 1895 Shaw became a drama critic for the Saturday Review. Articles written for the paper were later collected in Our Theatres In The Nineties (1932). Music, art, and drama criticism Shaw wrote for Dramatic Review (1885-86), Our Corner (1885-86), The Pall Mall Gazette (1885-88), The World (1886-94), and The Star (1888-90) as ‘Corno bi Basetto’. His music criticism were collected in Shaw’s Music (1981). After lacing a shoe too tightly, an operation was performed on his foot for necrosis; Shaw was unable to put his foot on the ground for eighteen months. During this period he wrote Caesar And Clelopatra (1901) and The Perfect Wagnerite (1898).
In 1898 Shaw married the wealthy Charlotte Payne-Townshend. They settled in 1906 in the Hertfordshire village of Ayot St. Lawrence. Shaw remained with Charlotte until her death.
The Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen had a great influence on Shaw’s thinking. For a summer meeting of the Fabian Society in 1890, he wrote The Quintessence Of Ibsenism (1891), in which he considered Ibsen a pioneer, “who declares that it is right to do something hitherto regarded as infamous.” Shaw’s early plays, Widower’s Houses (1892), which criticized slum landlords, as well as several subsequent ones, were not well received. His ‘unpleasant plays’, ideological attacks on the evils of capitalism and explorations of moral and social problems, were followed with more entertaining but as principled productions. Candida was a comedy about the wife of a clergyman, and what happens when a weak, young poet wants to rescue her from her dull family life. But it was not until John Bull’s Other Island (1904) that Shaw gained in England a wider popularity with his own plays. In the Unites States and Germany Shaw’s name was already well-known. Between 1904 and 1907 The Royal Court Theatre staged several of his plays, including Candida.
