George Bernard Shaw

NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 1925

Irish writer and literary critic, born on July 26, 1856, in Dublin, and died on November 2, 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. Coming from a family of few possessions, he never attended university. In 1876 he moved to London and worked as a journalist, although his dream was to be a writer. He never stopped writing despite the failure of his first works. He has become a theatre, art and music critic for various publications such as the Saturday Review, Our Corner, The Pall Mall Gazette, The Word and The Star.
As a member of the Social Democratic Federation, he had the opportunity to get to know the work of Karl Marx. From then on he became an active socialist, a member of the Fabian Society, lectured and distributed pamphlets, some of his own such as The Fabian Manifesto (1884) and Socialism for Millionaires (1901). He participated in several actions that later led to the emergence of the Labour Party. In the meantime he wrote several political plays such as Arms and the Man (1894), Devil's Disciple (1897), Man and Superman (1902), Major Barbara (1905) and Pygmalion (Pygmalion, 1913). As a staunch socialist, he was one of the opponents of the First World War. After the war, he wrote several successful plays, such as Heartbreak House (1919), Back to Methuselah (1921), St. Joan (1923), The Apple Cart (1929) and Too True to be Good (1932), which won him the Nobel Prize.

George Bernard Shaw. In Infopédia [Online]. Porto: Porto Editora, 2003-2011.