The Quintessential
G.B.S. : The Arts
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George Bernard Shaw
The Quintessence of Ibsenism.
London: Walter Scott, 1891.
This book grew out of a lecture that Shaw delivered to the Fabian
Society on July 18, 1890, in a series of lectures on "Socialism in
Contemporary Life." It was the first book on Ibsen written in the
English language. A revised, second edition, "Now Completed to the
Death of Ibsen," published by Constable in 1913, is also in the
collection.
This copy is inscribed "To Florence Emery from G. Bernard
Shaw." Florence Emery was the actress Florence Farr, who played the
role of Blanche in the first production of Widower's Houses.
Tipped onto the leaf facing the title page is an early photograph of
Shaw.
Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection |
George Bernard Shaw
The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on The Ring of the
Niblungs.
London: Grant Richards, 1898.
It was Shaw's firmly held view that it was not possible to
appreciate Wagner's works without understanding them. To that
end he wrote this book, as he wrote in his Preface, "to
impart the ideas which are most likely to be lacking in the
conventional Englishman's equipment. I came by them myself much
as Wagner did, having learnt more about music than about anything
else in my youth, and sown my political wild oats subsequently in
the revolutionary school."
Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection
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George Bernard Shaw
"A Degenerate's View of Nordau."
Liberty, New York, July 27, 1895.
In this letter to Liberty editor and publisher Benjamin R.
Tucker, Shaw attacked Max Nordau's book Degeneration, shown
below. When his German translator asked him to revise it for
publication, Shaw asked Holbrook Jackson to issue it as a pamphlet. It
became The Sanity of Art, published in 1908.
Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection
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George Bernard Shaw
The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about
Artists being Degenerate.
London: The New Age Press, 1908.
Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection
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George Bernard Shaw
Draft Letter to Millionaires to be Sent Personally by G.
Bernard Shaw enclosing the official documents.
Typescript, carbon copy, [London, 1907]
As stated in the body of the text, this letter was drafted to
be sent to "a very small number of rich and influential
public men in England who realize the enormous national importance
of the theatre and the hopelessness of trusting to commercial
competition to make the best of it."
Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection
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George Bernard Shaw
Statement of the evidence in chief of George Bernard Shaw
before the Joint-Committee on Stage Plays (Censorship and
Theatre Licensing).
[London]: Printed privately, July [1909].
The text of this pamphlet was incorporated into Shaws
preface to The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet, published in
1911. This is one of the great historic statements against
censorship.
Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection
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George Bernard Shaw
Bernard Shaw on Modern Typography.
Reprinted from The Caxton Magazine, London.
Cleveland: Horace Carr at The Printing Press, 1915.
Shaw concludes this piece on typography as follows: "For--and
this is the moral of what I have been saying--well-printed books are
just as scarce as well-written ones; and every author should remember
that the most costly books in the world derive their value from the
craft of the printer, and not from the genius of the author. I have seen
a bestiary, or mediaeval natural history, the worthless compilation of a
childish liar, purchased for £800 in a city where the works of
Shakespeare sell for tenpence halfpenny. And if you want to buy a
Shakespeare for £60, you must bid for one of the volumes of his sonnets
which Morris printed at the Kelmscott Press."
Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection
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[George Bernard Shaw]
London Music In 1888-89 As Heard by Corno Di Bassetto (Later
Known as Bernard Shaw) With Some Further Autobiographical
Particulars.
London: Constable and Company Limited, [1937].
This copy is inscribed "To the very irreverent William Ralph
Inge as a subject for an essay to be entitled What Would I Have Been
Like Had I Been Brought Up Like Shaw? 5th Oct. 1937." The Very
Rev. William Ralph Inge was Dean of St. Pauls, London.
Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection
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