Holroyd Michael - Bernard Shaw: the one-volume definitive edition

Praise for Bernard Shaw

We regard Mr. Holroyd with awe, as a prodigy among biographers. He has done his work calmly, in an admirably clear and concise style that is all his own.

Robertson Davies, New York Times Book Review

The definitive biography of Bernard Shaw worthy of its subject. The abundance of pungent quotation from Shaw himself is particularly to be commended.

Conor Cruise OBrien

A masterly biography.Leon Edel

By the end of this fascinating volume, Holroyd provides not only a sense of what it must have been like to know Shaw but also, far more enriching, a sense of what it must have been like to be Shaw.

Time

Holroyd shows himself more than equal to his task. He has a lively style, humor, a feeling for the finer shades of character, a keen sense of social atmosphere. His judgments are flexible and independent. Above all, he writes like a writer.

John Gross, New York Review of Books

Scintillating and suspenseful warrants awed gratitude.

John Updike, The New Yorker

By the same author

Non-fiction

HUGH KINGSMILL

UNRECEIVED OPINIONS

LYTTON STRACHEY

AUGUSTUS JOHN

BASIL STREET BLUES

WORKS ON PAPER

MOSAIC

Fiction

A DOGS LIFE

Editor

THE BEST OF HUGH KINGSMILL

LYTTON STRACHEY BY HIMSELF

THE ART OF AUGUSTUS JOHN

WITH MALCOLM EASTON

THE GENIUS OF SHAW

THE SHORTER STRACHEY

WITH PAUL LEVY

WILLIAM GERHARDIES GODS FIFTH COLUMN

WITH ROBERT SKIDELSKY

ESSAYS BY DIVERS HANDS

NEW SERIES: VOLUME XLII

Between pages 242 and 243

1 Vandeleur Lee, with Shaws mother and father.

2 Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw.

3 George Carr Shaw.

4 Bernard Shaw, aged about 19.

5 Jenny Patterson.

6 Alice Lockett.

7 Shaw, 1891.

8 Charlotte Payne-Townsend, 1898.

9 Elizabeth Robins, 1891.

10 William Archer, c. 1900.

11 W. B. Yeats, 1890s.

12 Florence Farr.

Between pages 530 and 531

13 Sir Henry Irving.

14 Lillah McCarthy.

15 Shaw and Harley Granville Barker, 1901.

16 Shaw and Charlotte, c. 1905.

17 Ellen Terry.

18 Mrs Patrick Campbell.

19 Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

20 Shaw and Elgar, 1929.

21 A Fabian Society Summer School, 1922.

22 Shaw in Hollywood.

23 Erica Cotterill.

24 Molly Tompkins.

25 G.B.S. with Blanche Patch.

26 Charlotte Shaw.

27 Shaw in 1946.

The many people and institutions that helped me to prepare the original four volumes of my Shaw biography are comprehensively listed in those volumes, and I take this opportunity to renew my thanks to them all. I have continued reading The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies in the United States and The Shavian in Britain, as well as new publications about G.B.S. and his contemporaries, and to keep an eye out for Shaw manuscript material coming up at auction, so as to make necessary adjustments to my text in this abridgement. I owe special thanks to Sarah Johnson who transcribed my increasingly illegible marginalia on to immaculate discs; to my editor Alison Samuel who has continued walking in my steps and issuing corrections when I put a foot wrong; and to Howard Davies who queried anything queryable in this revised narrative.

MICHAEL HOLROYD

Porlock Weir, December 1996

1, 3 Courtesy of the British Library, London. 2 Courtesy of Archibald Henderson, Man of the Century, Appleton, Century, Crofts, New York, 1956. 5, 24 Courtesy of the Dan H. Laurence Collection, University of Guelph Library, Guelph, Ontario. 6, 12 Courtesy of Dan H. Laurence, Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters, Vol. 1, Max Reinhardt Ltd, London, 1965. 7, 10, 13 Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London. 8 Courtesy of the National Trust, 9 Courtesy of the Fales Library, New York University Library, New York. 11 Courtesy of John Kelly (ed.), Yeats Letters, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, 1986. 14 Courtesy of the Burgunder Collection, Cornell University Library, New York. 15, 18, 26 Hulton Getty (Picture Library), London. 16 Courtesy of Mary Shenfield, Bernard Shaw: A Pictorial Biography, Thames & Hudson, London, 1962. 17 Courtesy of the Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 19 Courtesy of the Sir Barry Jackson Trust, Birmingham. 20 Courtesy of Allan Chappelow, Shaw the Villager and Human Being, Charles Skilton, London, 1961. 21 Pictorial Parade Inc. 22 Courtesy of Allan Chappelow, Shaw The Chucker-Out, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1969. 23 Courtesy of Smithsonian Magazine, Washington DC. 25 Courtesy of London of School of Economics and Political Science, British Library of Political and Economic Science, and the Society of Authors, London. Front endpaper Courtesy of Mander & Mitchenson Theatre Collection, Beckenham. Back endpaper Photo by Vandamm.