The Quintessential G.B.S. : Novels

 George Bernard Shaw
Cashel Byron’s Profession. A Novel.
[London]: The Modern Press, 1886.

This was Shaw’s fourth novel and the first to appear in book form. It was also his most successful, containing more plot and less propaganda than his first three novels, Immaturity, The Irrational Knot, and Love Among the Artists. In 1901, Shaw reworked the story of Cashel Byron the prizefighter into a play in blank verse and gave it the title The Admirable Bashville.

Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection

 
The Modern Press
The Best Novel of the Season. Cashel Byron’s Profession.
London: The Modern Press, [1886]

This broadside advertisement for the first appearance in print of a novel by George Bernard Shaw contains the following statement from the June 29 issue of Saturday Review: "To call it 'the best novel of the season,' if skill, humour, style, and unflagging interest count for anything is not praising it extravagantly."

Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection

 

 

George Bernard Shaw
An Unsocial Socialist
London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., 1887.

Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection

George Bernard Shaw
Love Among the Artists
Chicago: Herbert S. Stone and Company, 1900.

This is the first edition of Shaw’s third novel. It was not published in England until 1914. In another copy of this edition Shaw wrote: "This is not a piracy. Messrs. Stone were my American publishers in 1900 and until their bankruptcy not long after."

Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collectio

George Bernard Shaw

The Irrational Knot By Bernard Shaw, Being the Second Novel of his Nonage.
New York: Brentano’s, 1905.

The Irrational Knot first appeared in serialized form in Our Corner between April, 1885, and February, 1887. Shaw revised it extensively for this first book publication of the text in 1905.

Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection
George Bernard Shaw
Immaturity
London: Constable and Company Limited, [1931].

This was the first of what became 37 volumes of Shaw’s works issued uniformly by Constable and Company between 1931 and 1951 as the Standard Edition of the Works of Bernard Shaw. This copy is inscribed by the author to Mary Catherine Inge, the wife of the Dean of St. Paul’s.

Sidney P. Albert -- George Bernard Shaw Collection

 

 

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