In his introduction Dan H. Laurence notes that 'theatrics' connotes not only activities of a theatrical character but behaviour that manifests itself as theatricality. All the correspondence selected for this volume - most of it hitherto unpublished - relates to Bernard Shaw's theatre dealings and theatrical interest, at the same time attesting to the 'histrionic instinct' and 'theatrified imagination' (his own phrases) of the man who penned them.

More than one hundred letters are represented, starting from mid-1889, when Shaw had not yet completed his first play and was known...

After movie-makers in England bungled film versions of Bernard Shaw's How He Lied to Her Husband and Arms and the Man, producers and directors in Germany and Holland botched those based on Pygmalion, and a Hollywood screenplay desecrated The Devil's Disciple, Shaw took a chance on Gabriel Pascal and gave him permission to produce a movie version of Pygmalion in England. The contract was signed on 13 December 1935 and Pascal, a charming, flamboyant Hungarian emigre with relatively little experience in cinema, did the playwright proud. Shaw's gamble paid off in this Pygmalion, which, to this...

George Bernard Shaw and Nancy Lady Astor enjoyed a close friendship for over twenty years, from the late 1920s until Shaw's death in 1950. Although opposites in many matters - particularly politics - Shaw and Astor were irresistibly attracted to each other, both being unconventional firebrands with ready wits. This collection of nearly 250 letters between Shaw and Astor - as well as between Astor and Shaw's wife, Charlotte, and Shaw's secretary, Blanche Patch - illustrates the rewarding friendship the two shared and the numerous issues they debated.

Perhaps the most fascinating letters...

Bernard Shaw was twenty-four and Sidney Webb twenty-one when they met in October 1880 at a gathering of a debating club called the Zetetical Society. Having sympathetic interests, both men decided, after some personal and joint exploration, to devote their lives to improving the human condition. This collection of 140 annotated letters, 74 of which have never been published, documents the subsequent friendship and collaboration shared by Shaw, Webb, and Webb's wife Beatrice, throughout their lives.

The letters, written between 1883 and 1946, discuss the founding of the Fabian...

Unlikely friends and collaborators, Bernard Shaw and Gilbert Murray carried on a lively and wide-ranging correspondence for more than fifty years. When they began exchanging letters in the late 1890s, Shaw was a renowned Fabian propagandist, reviewer, and author of anti-conventional plays. Murray was a classicist and translator of ancient Greek drama who would eventually become Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford. Beginning with their shared distaste for the popular well-made plays of the era, their correspondence quickly expanded into collaboration Murray helped revise Shaw s Major...

Bernard Shaw and William Archer is the final volume in the series on the Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw. Throughout their four decades of friendship the two men campaigned for the New Drama and the New Theatre." In the early years of their activities, Archer led the campaigns with his theatre reviews and his books on contemporary British theatre. He also translated, published, and helped stage the London premieres of Henrik Ibsen s plays. During the 1890s both Archer and Shaw used their theatre reviews to support their campaigns, and Shaw began to step forward as a...