Judging Shaw

GBS was the first great brand – discover how he created this most modern of concepts.

The fourth book in the Royal Irish Academy's award-winning 'Judging' series looks at the legacy of George Bernard Shaw, Nobel prizewinner for literature.

George Bernard Shaw has left a vast legacy of theatrical, fictional, polemical, critical and philosophical writing. The first person to win both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award, Shaw bridges the Victorian era and the contemporary culture of celebrity. The GBS brand came to be recognised globally as referring to an Irish provocateur with a red beard and startling opinions. He was a master of self-invention, a nobody who captured the zeitgeist and one of the first private individuals to understand fully how to generate—and how to use—global fame.

The timing of Judging Shaw is fortuitous, as it will serve to reintroduce GBS to an Irish and international readership. The book is an interesting, informative, and well-written survey of Shaw/GBS and will be a welcome addition to the library of those who know Bernard Shaw perhaps only as the author of Pygmalion, his most popular and frequently performed play.

Fintan O'Toole is a columnist and literary editor with The Irish Times and Leonard L. Milberg lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University. He has written books on Irish history, politics, society and culture.