GB Shaw

George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950
Playwright, born in Dublin into a loveless and genteely poor household overshadowed by his father's tippling, but filled with music and musicians by his mother. Shaw was educated both at Wesley Connexional School, in the National Gallery of Ireland, and by his own wide reading. In 1876 he joined his mother who had moved to London as a music teacher.

From 1878 to 1883 Shaw wrote but failed to publish five novels, but in subsequent years made remarkable intellectual progress, acheived conquest over his shyness, and made many important friendships. In 1884 Shaw joined the Fabian Society, and over the next decade wrote as a book reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette, an art critic for the World, a music critic for the Star under the pseudonym Corno di Bassetto, and dramatic critic for the Saturday Review.

By 1925, Shaw's work earned him the Nobel Prize. He established the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation and left residue of an estate to institute a British alphabet of at least forty letters (12).