Full Name: George Bernard Shaw

Father: George Carr Shaw (1815–1885)
Mother: Lucinda Gurly (1830–1913)
Wife: Charlotte Payne-Townshend ( m. 1898, d. 1943)

Date of Birth: 26 July 1856
Place of Birth: Dublin, Ireland
Date of Death: 2 November 1950 (aged 94)
Place of Death: Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
Cause of Death: Accident - Fall

Remains: Cremated (ashes scattered)
Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Nationality: Irish
Occupation: Dramatist, Critic, Political Activist

Education: Wesleyan Connexional School, Dublin's Central Model School, Wesley College, Dublin, Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School.

Notable Award(s): Nobel Prize in Literature (1925), Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay (1938).

Books & Plays: My Fair Lady, Pygmalion, The Millionairess, Caesar and Cleopatra, Major Barbara, Arms and the Man, Saint Joan, Androcles and the Lion, The Devil's Disciple, The Doctor's Dilemma, Helden.


July 26, 1856, George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland. He moved to London in 1876. In 1895, he became a theatre critic for the Saturday Review and he began writing plays. The film My Fair Lady was made by his play Pygmalion. His screenplay won an Oscar. He won a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925). He wrote more than 60 plays during his whole life.


Early Life: George Bernard Shaw was born on 26th July 1856 at 3 Upper Synge Street (later 33 Synge Street), Dublin. Shaw's father George Carr Shaw (1815–1885) was a corn merchant and also an alcoholic. So he was able to spend very little money for George's education. His mother was Lucinda Gurly (1830–1913). George went to local schools but never went to university and was largely self-taught. Shaw went to the Wesleyan Connexional School, then moved to a private school near Dalkey, and then to Dublin's Central Model School, ending his formal education at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School.

He started to work as a junior clerk when he was 15 years. In 1876 he moved to London, joining his sister and mother. Shaw did not return to Ireland for nearly thirty years. Shaw began his literary career by writing music and theatre criticism, and novels, including the semi-autobiographical Immaturity without much success. In 1884 Shaw joined the Fabian Society, a middle-class socialist group and served on its executive committee from 1885 to 1911.


Major Writing: In 1895 Shaw became a drama critic for the Saturday Review. These articles were later collected in Our Theatres In The Nineties (1932). Shaw also wrote music, art and drama criticism for Dramatic Review (1885-86), Our Corner (1885-86), The Pall Mall Gazette (1885-88), The World (1886-94), and The Star (1888-90) as 'Corno di Basetto'. His music criticism has been collected in Shaw's Music (1981). The Perfect Wagnerite appeared in 1898 and caesar And Cleopatra in 1901.

Other important plays by Shaw are Caesar and Cleopatra (1901), a historical play filled with allusions to modern times, and Androcles and the Lion (1912), in which he exercised a kind of retrospective history and from modern movements drew deductions for the Christian era. In Major Barbara (1905), one of Shaw's most successful «discussion» plays, the audience's attention is held by the power of the witty argumentation that man can achieve aesthetic salvation only through political activity, not as an individual. The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), facetiously classified as a tragedy by Shaw, is really a comedy the humour of which is directed at the medical profession. Candida (1898), with social attitudes toward sex relations as objects of his satire, and Pygmalion (1912), a witty study of phonetics as well as a clever treatment of middle-class morality and class distinction, proved some of Shaw's greatest successes on the stage. It is a combination of the dramatic, the comic, and the social corrective that gives Shaw's comedies their special flavour.

At a Glance:
  • The Devil's Disciple (1897)
  • Arms and the Man (1898)
  • Mrs Warren's Profession (1898)
  • Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1900)
  • Man and Superman (1902)
  • Caesar and Cleopatra (1901)
  • Major Barbara (1905)
  • Androcles and the Lion (1912)
  • Pygmalion (1913)
  • Heartbreak House (1919)
  • Saint Joan (1923)

Death: George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright died at Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England on November 2, 1950. During his life, he wrote more than 60 plays.