Social Victorians/People/George Bernard Shaw

Also Known As

• Family name: Shaw
• Bernard Shaw
• G. B. Shaw
• G. B. S.
• Corno di Bassetto, pseudonym for The Star

Demographics

• Nationality: Irish with English ancestry
• Religion: Protestant

Residences

• 37 Fitzroy Street, London (23 December 1880 – 22 April 1882)
• "36 Osnaburgh Street, on the east side of Regent's Park" (22 April 1882 – ) (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 113)
• Hindhead, near Haslemere, in Surrey

Family

• Bessie (Lucinda Elizabeth) née Gurly Shaw (1830–1913)
• someone

1. Lucinda (Lucy) Frances (1853–1920)
2. Elinor Agnes (1855–1876)

• George Carr Shaw (1814–1885)

1. George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950)

• George John Lee

• George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950)
• Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend (20 January 1857 – 12 September 1943)

Acquaintances, Friends and Enemies

Friends

• Annie Horniman
• William Butler Yeats
• Arnold Dolmetsch
• In July 1936 Shaw wrote Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister, urging that Dolmetsch be granted a Civil Pension. Shaw also drafted the letter asking for support from Dolmetsch's friends and notable artists of the day (Campbell 276).
• Lady Jane Wilde: Shaw attended her "At Homes" "by the 1880s" (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 100).
• Elizabeth Lawson, "mother of the landscape painter Cecil Lawson on whom he [Shaw] had modelled the artist Cyril Scott in Immaturity"; Shaw attended her "At Homes" "by the 1880s" (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 100).
• William Morris (see serialization of his early novels, below)
• Annie Besant (see serialization of his early novels, below). GBS and Besant had met "at the Dialectical Society in January 1885; he contributed a column, "Art Corner," "covering all the arts," June 1885–September 1886 to Besant's magazine Our Corner (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 140).
• William Archer, whom he met in 1883 in the Reading Room of the British Museum (Holroyd, vol. 1., p. 134).
• William Morris
• Sydney Cockerell
• Walter Crane
• H.H. Champion, "a restless, clever, epileptic man who had left the army to take part in the socialist movement of the 1880s, and who was later to become Shaw's dramatic agent in Australia. Champion had a taste for pugilism, and liked the novel so much that he stereotyped the pages from To-Day and published them in a misshapen 'Modern Press' edition of two thousand five hundred copies in March 1886" (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 120).

Timeline

1873 June, Lee moved from Dublin to London; Bessie and the two girls joined him, leaving GBS in Dublin with George Carr Shaw.

1876, GBS left Ireland for Agnes's funeral and joined his mother and the family in London. He spent the afternoons of the next decade in the Reading Room of the British Library, educating himself and writing novels.

1880 December 23, Shaw and the family in London moved to this address, "to an unfurnished apartment on the second floor" (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 84). Holyroyd calls these rooms "insalubrious," saying that Shaw "had so often been ill" there (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 113).

1882 April 22, with his mother, Shaw moved to a "highly respectable house," "36 Osnaburgh Street, on the east side of Regent's Park" (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 113).

1883, GBS met William Archer in the Reading Room: <quote>Working at the British Museum Reading Room in 1883, Archer's attention had been / drawn to what appeared as a damaged brown paper parcel on the next seat. This was Shaw. "There I used to sit day by day," Archer recalled, "beside a pallid young man with red hair and beard, dressed in Jaeger all-wool clothing which rather harmonized with his complexion. My interest was excited not only by his appearance, but by the literature to which he devoted himself day after day. It consisted of Karl Marx's Das Kapital in French, and a full orchestral score of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde."'</quote> (Holroyd, vol. 1, pp. 134–35).

1884 March through December, GBS's novel An Unsocial Socialist was rejected, as usual, by every book publisher he sent it to, but it was serialized in "To-Day, a new 'Monthly Magazine of Scientific Socialism,'" edited by J.L. Joynes and E. Belfort Bax (March and December 1884) (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 120). Shaw said, "William Morris spotted it and made my acquaintance on account of it. That took me into print and started me" (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 120).

1885-1889, Shaw worked for the Pall Mall Gazette from 1885 to 1888, writing book reviews.

1885 January – 1886 September, Shaw contributed the column "Art Corner" to Annie Besant's "socialist magazine" Our Corner (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 140).

1885 April though 1886 March, "Cashel Byron's Profession was also serialized, due largely to the enthusiasm of the magazine's printer, H.H. Champion .... This was Shaw's first published book, costing a shilling and carrying a royalty of one penny a copy." (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 120)

April 1885 – 1887 February, GBS's The Irrational Knot was serialized in Our Corner (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 120).

1886–1890, Shaw, as Corno di Bassetto, wrote about music and musical events.

1886, spring, to 1889, autumn, "Shaw held the post of art critic on The World" (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 140).

1887 November – 1888 December, GBS's Love Among the Artists was also serialized in Our Corner (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 120).

1888, circa, Shaw wrote in 1903, "I believe I have not been at an at-home for fifteen years [about 1888]; and as far as I can see, the next social engagement in which I am likely to take part is my funeral" (qtd in Holroyd, vol. 1., p. 101).

1889 April 2, Amy Levy and Elizabeth Pennell both attended what Pennell called a "converzazione" at the Fabian Society in the Bloomsbury Town Hall. Pennell says, "We went to the Converzazione of the Fabian Society in Bloomsbury Town Hall. A collection of cranks, native and foreign: young women in extraordinary costumes, one a perfect Burne-Jones, played the violin; young men with long hair and velvet coats. Most people were in evening dress so that a conspicuous figure was George Bernard Shaw in grey Jaeger get-up, flirting outrageously with all the girls in the room" (Beckman).

1890–1894, Shaw wrote for The World.

1890 November 15, beginning on this date, Shaw and Florence Farr were romantic and sexual partners (Greet xvii)

1893, Beatrice Webb: <quote>He is an excellent friend — at least to men — but beyond this I know nothing. I am inclined to think that he has a 'slight' personality — agile, graceful and even virile, but lacking in weight. Adored by many women, he is a born philanderer. A vegetarian, fastidious but unconventional in his clothes, six foot in height with a lithe, broad-chested figure and laughing blue eyes. Above all, a brilliant talker, and, therefore, a delightful companion</quote> ("George Bernard Shaw" Spartacus).

1895, Charles Trevelyan: <quote>George Bernard Shaw is very much what I hoped and expected, excessively talkative, genial and amusing, and not unduly aggressive or cynical. He is not full of praise for anything or anybody — but is the perfection of real good nature</quote> ("George Bernard Shaw" Spartacus).

1895–1898, Shaw began writing theatre criticism for the Saturday Review when Frank Harris was editor.

1898, GBS and Charlotte Payne-Townshend married.

1925, 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Questions and Notes

1. Lucy Shaw, sister, joined the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1884 (Holroyd, vol. 1., p. 65) and then a D'Oyly Carte company, going on tour in 1884 (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 113). [Check dates?]
2. GBS's first five novels were not successful.

Bibliography

• Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Life and Letters, p. 179. Posting on victoria@listserv.indiana.edu. Linda Hunt Beckman <beckman@temple.edu>, 20 October 2003, "Re: conversaziones at Berkeley Galleries; mourning customs."
• Campbell.
• "George Bernard Shaw." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Online. http://www.eb.com:180/bol/topic?idxref=483575 (accessed September 1999).
• "George Bernard Shaw." Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia. Online http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jwilde.htm (accessed September 1999).
• "George Bernard Shaw." Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw (accessed July 2020).
• Greet.
• Holroyd, Michael. Bernard Shaw, vol. 1, 1856–1898: The Search for Love. New York: Random House, 1988.