User:Pwendt/People/Bernard Shaw

created 2019-04-26

Author:George Bernard Shaw --in progress, 1946 focus
elsf George Bernard Shaw 17781 (867) --"Bernard Shaw" at LC 

Wikipedia "known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw"

SFE3

... " Shaw's first genuine sf play, an important example of the Scientific Romance, is Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (1921; rev 1921 UK; performed 1922: further rev several times; much rev 1945), a five-part depiction of mankind's Evolution – it was his culminating presentation of Creative Evolution – from the time of Genesis (see Adam and Eve) into the Far Future, during the course of which people have become long-lived (see Immortality) and, by the year 31,920 CE, are on the verge of suffering corporeal Transcendence into disembodied thought-entities; incidental sf devices include cellphone equivalents, a kind of Force Field and the revelation that by 3000 CE nothing whatever remains of London. The play's reputation has suffered not only from the variable quality of its successive sequences, but from an implied conflation of Eugenics and the reticently argued but unmistakably anti-Darwinian Lamarckian principles that underlie his vision of humanity's rapid progress upwards.

...

" None of Shaw's nineteenth-century novels are of genre interest, but The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God (1932 chap) is a fantasy Satire on evolving views of Religion, and some of the items assembled in Short Stories: Scraps and Shavings (coll 1932) are sf, including "Aerial Football: The New Game" (November 1907 The Neolith). Both books were assembled with revisions as Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings (omni 1934; vt The Black Girl in Search of God, and Some Lesser Tales 1946). Shaw early developed a strategy for his dramatic works, where his plays as published are accompanied by extensive prefaces in which various theses, some of broad sf interest, are eloquently expounded; he developed no similar strategy for his fiction, which he seemed (correctly) to think of as peripheral. ... [JC]

EoF

" Some of GBS's short fiction is more sustained fantasy. The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God (1932 chap) details the young woman's search for meaning, via interviews conducted with successive versions of God as presented in the Bible, and with sages from various periods of history; Short Stories (coll 1932) includes "Aerial Football: The New Game" (1907), a Posthumous Fantasy; and Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings (omni 1934), which includes revisions of both Black Girl and the earlier Short Stories, includes in "Don Giovanni Explains" a harkening back to the opera protagonist from Man and Superman. The Black Girl in Search of God, and Some Lesser Tales (coll 1946) assembles similar material, revised.

" GBS, financially independent for the final half-century of his career, could make constant revisions (often unsignalled) to reprints and resortings of his work. The bibliography of any GBS item, therefore, is likely to be complex; no attempt has been made here to trace the textual history of individual titles. [JC]

one review lists 10 Penguin volumes, 1/- each

1. Pygmalion
2. Major Barbara
3. Plays Pleasant
4. Plays Unpleasant
5. Three Plays for Puritans
6. Man and Superman
7. The Doctor's Dilemma
8. Saint Joan
9. Androcles and the Lion
10. The Black Girl in Search of God --indb (scope unknown)

By Bernard Shaw. (10 Vols. 1s each. Penguin Books.)

.John Farleigh 125352 (16)

EN: "noted for his illustrations of George Bernard Shaw's work The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, which caused controversy when released due to the religious, sexual and racial themes within the writing and John Farleigh's complementary (and risqué) wood engravings commissioned by Shaw for the book."

LC (2)

1934 Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings https://lccn.loc.gov/34012700

1939 LEC Back to Methuselah

The Black Girl

The black girl in search of God : and some lesser tales Fo[1](81)

1932 chap o[2] o[3]

1933 US Fo[4]

Black Girl variant/revised? novella T2122081

Black Girl parodies o[5] o[6] o[7]

• Penguin (10)
• Back to Methuselah (Oxford)
• G.B.S. 90. Edited by S. Winsten. (21s. Hutchinson.)

Hutchinson o[1087170449] o[977867934]

Dodd, Mead o[1087159817] o[1014763196]

• Portrait of G.B.S., By Felix Topolski. (42s. Eyre & Spottiswoode.) Fo[8](14)

--"Books of the Day", joint review, The Scotsman 1946-07-25 p7

---

Back to Methuselah

Back to Methuselah: A Modern Pentateuch T2473175 --CHECK newspapers

Barnabas story T2122068 --or deleted episode?

Bleiler Early Years and British Library BL 003359726 consider it a single long play.

Lm$i 1921 Brentano's (US), 1st printing, May

BLOHd£i 1921 Constable (UK)

O..i 1922-08 Brentano's, 8th printing, August 1922 --LATER restore 1922 as 8th printing(?)

Om. 1934 Dodd, Mead & Co. = 12th printing (Dodd, Mead acquired the complete works of Shaw per Wikipedia)

BL

1921 Constable 003359726 xci+267pp

1922 Tauchnitz 011909919 011909920 --multiple printings 1922 to 1929?

1931 Constable 010254833 --pp --no copyright mention

1939 Harmondsworth 003359727 256pp

1945 Oxford Rev [ie 2nd] 010254835 --pp

1947 Oxford galaxy 010254836

1939 1961 Penguin 014392977 --pp

1971 Penguin 003359730 319pp

1977[1978] Penguin 010538724 319pp

Amazon shows Kindle as New edition, December 1987

paperback as 1987-12-10 at Amazon UK and 1988-05-03 at Amazon US, with "Look inside" 3rd printing per numberline (3rd printing as this ISBN?):

• first(?) printed leaf "The Bernard Shaw Library" (brief biography); "This text conforms with the definitive text as published in The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw Collectd Plays with their Prefaces, under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence."
• title page undated; "Definitive Text"
• copyright page notes

First published 1921

Published in Penguin Books 1939

3

• Contents, p[5]-6

Convincing records as 1921 Brentano's

o[9]

HDL 1921 Constable(1) vii-lxxxvii lxxxix; 1922 Tauchnitz(1)

1921 Brentano's(several) ;

1. Dodd, Mead 1934 (Twelfth Printing, March, 1934) (c)1930 ; Preface: The Infidel Half Century, vii-ci ; Contents, ciii (no back pages)
2. Brentano's 1921 (Fifth Printing, September, 1921)
3. Brentano's 1921 (Second Printing, June, 1921)
4. uc Brentano's 1921 (Fourth Printing, August, 1921)
5. hu Brentano's 1921 (Fourth Printing, August, 1921)
6. hu Brentano's 1921 apparent 1st printing, May 1921 = identical to 1934, from a glance at pages vii, ci, 1, 300
7. Brentano's 1921 (Fifth Printing, September, 1921)
8. uc Brentano's 1921 (Fourth Printing, August, 1921)
9. Brentano's 1929 (Eleventh Printing, February, 1929) t.p. verso lists 11 printings

1922 Brentano's(1)

• title page (Eighth Printing, July, 1922)

That is, printings 1 2 4 5 8 11 12

LO.. 1939 Limited Editions Club https://lccn.loc.gov/39030217 --NEEDs PREFACE not INTRODUCTION

o[10]

1945\ [1946] Oxford https://lccn.loc.gov/46020908 as Milford, Oxford; The World's Classics #500 --dnf BL --dnf newspapers

1947 Oxford https://lccn.loc.gov/47002275 Rev. ed. with a postscript; Galaxy edition --BL 010254836

q-- 2004 Gutenberg #13084 --no source stated

newspapers

1921/22 (521 title hits)

(constable 17)

Publication date (inferred) and price from UK newspapers and magazines 1921-06-23 (earliest found, a retailer advertisement) to -07-09, one a listing in "Books of the Week", Saturday Review -06-25 p528. 10/-

[11] NY Times 1921-06-23 p8 "Shaw Wants Man to Live 1,000 Years"; "London, June 22.--A new gospel of longevity by [GBS] will be published tomorrow by Messrs. Constable. ..." --review

(brentano's 11)

--review by Heywood Broun same day pD9, "Shaw Turns Preacher for New Creed of Creative Evolution" "... these five new plays form one great, unified story. It is a stupendous dramatic life-story of man, beginning in the days of the Garden of Eden and taking him as far into the future--as far as thought can reach."

Listed in the Boston Globe "Best Sellers of the Week" (Nonfiction), second -07-02 p3, fourth -07-16 p6

1929 brentano's (0)

1931 constable (9)

[12] Complete Plays (no prefaces) review 1931-05-21 p2

[13] The Spectator #5393 (1931-11-07) p606 --Standard Edition of the Worlds of Bernard Shaw, first volumes published 1931-11-05

1934

(notice of Back to Methuselah not found)

Short Stories, Scraps, and Shavings

[14] Manchester Guardian 1934-05-17 p7 "Books of the Day" --Standard Edition, review by Ivor Brown --vii+305 7/6

in the new Barnabas, "... an addition to that play, which introduces Mr. G. K. Chesterton under the title of Immenso Champernoon, as it also included Mr. Lloyd George as Lubin. There are forty pages of dialogue discarded from the play, and, whether they are actable or not, they are typically readable."

[15] "Book Notes" [16] NY Times 1934-05-17 p21 "Books Published Today"

"The book includes a domestic comedy about Conrad and Franklyn Barnabas, the clergyman and the biologist in Back to Methuselah."

1939 none genuine; 1944 none genuine ; 1945/47

("back to methuselah") 131 hits from May

("back to methuselah" shaw), 108

("back to methuselah" shaw oxford), 27 from July 1946

forthcoming 1946-07-26, Shaw's 90th birthday [17]

1946-07-25 [18] Man Gua p4; has published this month ; [19] The Scotsman reviews "Books of the Day"

[20] The Spectator 1946-08-30 p224 --review as revised with 81-page preface (1921), 18-page postscript (1944),

C$1.00 each; The Globe and Mail 1946-10-12 p10 Oxford University Press // 480 University Ave.   Toronto 2

(not reliably published in 1946) "The World's Classics now include a Galaxy Edition. No. 1 is Shaw's Back to Methuselah in a neat volume, larger than the regular World's Classics but small enough to be handy (Oxford $1.50).

--"Reprints and New Editions", The Virginia Quarterly Review 22.4 (Fall 1946) p.cviii

NYHT 1947-03-27 p27 (or 27A ?) "This revised edition, with a postscript ... introduces the World's Classics Galaxy Editions." $1.50

also From the Earth to the Moon and Round the Moon (Didier, $3) New edition.

NYT 1947-03-16 pBR8 "People Who Read and Write"; This month from Oxford, Shaw's Methuselah, "the first volume on the new American World's Classics Galaxy edition".

[21] NYT -03-30 pBR32 --advert the new series, first volume (next two vols non-genre)

WorldCat 131-140 of 222

Limited Editions Club 1939 o[22]

#131 Penguin 1944 [New postscript ed.] WorldCat library record reports a 1944 Penguin "[New postscript ed.]".

#132-44 as 1945

#145-48 as 1946 (145-47 as The World's Classics 500, one #148 as Galaxy ed., 1 o[23])

#150-59 as 1947, 261pp

some specify (c)1945 o[24] o[25] (but many do not)

LC? as [1946] o[26]

SFE3 "Brentano's, 1921) [play: two parts first performed 27 February 1922; ..."

"several editions between 1921 and 1945 contain unrecorded revisions: not here listed"

EoF "1921 US; rev 1921 UK; rev 1945"