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George Bernard Shaw Facts

George Bernard Shaw Facts
George Bernard Shaw was a Nobel Prize winning playwright born on July 26th, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland. His father was George Carr Shaw, a civil servant, and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, a singer. George had two sisters, Lucinda Frances (1853-1920) a light opera singer, and Elinor Agnes (1855-1876). Elinor passed away in 1876 from tuberculosis. George Bernard Shaw attended the Wesley College in Dublin briefly and then went to a private school, before finally transferring to Central Model School in Dublin. George Bernard Shaw did not like school and ended his formal education with the English Scientific and Commercial Day School in Dublin. His mother left for London with his sisters when he was 16, and he followed in 1876. He began writing and became a successful art critic.
Interesting George Bernard Shaw Facts:
George Bernard Shaw began his literary career with the novel Immaturity (1879), but failed to find a publisher at the time. It wouldn't be published until 1931.
George Bernard Shaw went on to write Cashel Byron's Profession (1882), An Unsocial Socialist (1887), The Irrational Knot (1880), and Love Among the Artists (1881). All five of his novels would go on to be published, although they were rejected in the beginning.
As a theatre critic George Bernard Shaw was published in Saturday Review in 1895.
In 1895 George Bernard Shaw became one of the founders of the London School of Economics and Political Science, due to his passion for humanitarian politics. He also helped form the Independent Labour Party in 1893.
George Bernard Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townsend in 1898, a woman he met while working with the Fabian Society to "promote gradual spread of socialism by peaceful means".
George Bernard Shaw became a botrough counselor to the Metropolitan Borough of St. Pancreas in 1900, but did not want to use a label as he wasn't sure which he belonged to. He resigned in 1903.
George Bernard Shaw's plays were performed for the first time in the 1890s. By 1900 he was an established playwright with 63 plays.
George Bernard Shaw wrote the play Caesar and Cleopatra in 1901, and Androcles and the Lion in 1912.
Major Barbara, the play he wrote in 1905, was one of his most successful works.
In 1921 George Bernard Shaw wrote Back to Methuselah, and in 1923 he wrote Saint Joan, his masterpiece.
After 1906 George Bernard Shaw wrote most of his work in a moveable hut in his garden of Shaw's Corner. He wrote Pygmalion there, among many other works.
George Bernard Shaw won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 at the age of 68, in part for the play Saint Joan, about Joan of Arc.
The Shaw Festival is held in Niagara-on-the-Lake each year. It began in 1962 with Candida and Don Juan in Hell (dream sequence from Man and Superman). Approximately 800 performances take place there each year.
George Bernard Shaw passed away on November 2nd, 1950 at the age of 94.
The movie Pygmalion (1938) was based on George Bernard Shaw's play, and he adapted it for film. It won the Oscar for Best Screenplay.


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