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Introduction: Michael Holroyd's Bernard Shaw
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15388 |
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BOOK WORLD
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12 / 1989 |
310 Words |
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George Bernard Shaw's influence and intriguing personality are investigated by British writer Michael Holroyd in a three volume biography that is winning critical acclaim.
Volume 1, Bernard Shaw: The Search for Love, 1856-1898, illuminates Shaw's early family life and analyzes relationships and ideas of importance to him. Published last year, the book was hailed by George Painter, Proust's biographer, as "one of the finest literary biographies of our half-century… It may well turn out to be the greatest of them all." The second volume, The Pursuit of Power, 1898-1918, recently published, covers the tumultuous period in Shaw's life during which he wrote his great plays, from Major Barbara to Pygmalion. By 1914 Shaw was the most famous writer in England, but the next year he would be branded a traitor because of his views on World War I. Volume 3 will treat the rest of Shaw's life. Titled The Lure of Fantasy, it will be published in 1991.
Michael Holroyd was born in 1935. He lives in London and is married to writer Margaret Drabble. In 1968 Holroyd's Lytton Strachey was acclaimed as a landmark in contemporary biography, and six years later his Augustus John confirmed Holroyd's place among the most influential modern biographers. He received the title Commander of the British Empire in January 1989. Holroyd has worked for fifteen years on the research and writing of Bernard Shaw.
Following the excerpts are commentaries. In "Intimate Journey," Nicholas Rudall enlarges upon the excerpt's theme, with particular attention to a menage a trois pattern recurring in Shaw's plays. Rudall also comments on Holroyd's literary achievement. A second
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