George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. His father was a struggling grain merchant, and his mother, a singer, moved to London with her music teacher; Shaw followed in 1876. He educated himself in the British Museum reading room, wrote five unsuccessful novels, and became a well-known critic of music and theater. He was an active member of the Fabian Society, which promoted socialism through gradual reform, and he gave many public lectures. His plays, often comedies of ideas that challenged social conventions, include Arms and the Man, Candida, Man and Superman, Major Barbara and Pygmalion (1913), about a phonetics professor who teaches a London flower girl to speak like a duchess; it later became the musical My Fair Lady. Saint Joan (1923) treats Joan of Arc as a person of genius and faith. Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and later won an Academy Award for the screenplay of Pygmalion. A vegetarian who did not drink, he lived to 94 and died at Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, in 1950.

George Bernard Shaw is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Born into an Irish Protestant family; he opposed organised religion. Source: Wikipedia