Bernard Shaw: From an "Unsuccessful Novelist" to a Nobel Laureate

"After sitting in an office for several years, I acquired a habit of regular daily work. I knew perfectly well that otherwise I would not achieve success and would not write books… As a result, in five years I wrote five novels" (B. Shaw).

It is about the experience of an "unsuccessful novelist" that the Nobel laureate (1925) in literature George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) recalls in "Autobiographical Notes" (1989), published in Russian for the first time. This edition from the RUDN University Library also includes 96 letters (out of 2,000+) and speeches "From the Tribune and the Lectern".

Bernard Shaw first gained fame and glory on the "clownish path": "a critic combines in himself a confessor and a court jester": "for ten whole years... after the complete failure of my novels, there was not a single exhibition, concert, or performance in London about which I would not have written in the pages of periodicals."

He was refused the position of political observer because: "I started reading Marx 14 years before Lenin, and there was not a single crossroads in London where I did not agitate for socialism."

Based on Shaw's enormous musical-critical heritage, composer and translator Sergei Alexandrovich Kondratiev (1896-1970) compiled the collection "On Music and Musicians" (1965). In it, you will find both an early (1877) and a late (1950) article by Shaw on music, as well as a fragment from his major work "The Perfect Wagnerite" (1898).

At the beginning of the 20th century, Shaw was recognized as the head of the new drama in England. The Complete Plays in Six Volumes (1978-1981) can be found at the RUDN University Library. In addition, the Rare Book collection contains a volume of his first Complete Works in 10 Volumes (1910) in Russian, as well as one of the first editions of his philosophical plays "Back to Methuselah" (1922), which he sent to V.I. Lenin.