Author:George Bernard Shaw

created 2019-04-24, in progress toward reference from multiple database records, certainly including the COLLECTION Back to Methuselah and its Preface and Postscript ESSAYs

target name unknown

1946

90th birthday

Back to Methuselah

WorldCat library record OCLC 224983578 reports an edition of the collection Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch as "Penguin, [1944]" and "[New postscript ed.]". The 1944 Penguin edition is spurious. Year 1944 (inferred or investigated, not stated) is incorrect, probably inferred from the signature appended to revised material. Penguin published an edition of Back to Methuselah in 1939 if not earlier, and presumably added the "New postscript" to its edition some time after it was first published in the Oxford edition (The World's Classics #500, 90th birthday edition).

No edition found in 1944 newspapers, nor 1945.

Assembled from 1946 newspapers and magazines 2019-04-24:

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

"For the 500th title in the World's Classics, Oxford University Press will publish Bernard's Back to Methuselah. The original text and preface have been revised by Mr. Shaw and he has added a 'postscript' written especially for this edition. Back to Methuselah will be published in London on July 26, which is Shaw's 90th birthday."

--The Austin American (Austin, Texas, USA) 1946-05-19 p. A6

On the celebration of Shaw's 90th birthday next day ("rather, the rest of the world is celebrating it for him"), The Manchester Guardian closes:

"For readers Penguin Books are publishing Shaw's plays in ten volumes; 100,000 copies of each are to be printed. The Oxford University Press has this month published in the World's Classics series Back to Methuselah, for some time out of print. In his correspondence with the publishers the author justly describes this lay as 'a world's classic or nothing'."

--"Our London Correspondence", Manchester Guardian 1946-07-25 p. 4

Shaw's "World Classic"

"In or about 1944 the Oxford University Press invited Mr. Shaw to allow them to include his metabiological pentateuch Back to Methuselah as the 500th volume in their famous World Classics series, and has revised it, together with its eighty-one-page preface, originally written in 1921, and has added a postscript of eighteen pages written twenty-three years later in 1944. Mr. Shaw must be one of the most consistent of all writers, but this does not mean there is no development in his work, and his claim to have developed his theme of Creative Evolution between his Man and Superman of 1901 and his Methuselah of 1921 can be sustained."

--review by W. J. Turner, The Spectator #6166 (1946-08-30) p. 224, "Shaw's 'World Classic' " (first paragraph, quoted entirely)