The Novels of George Bernard Shaw

Abstract

In the London of the late seventies, it was inevitable that a young man, determimed upon a serious literary career, should try his hand at the writing of novels. For this was an age when the novelist could aim at distinction and, at the same time, reasonably hope for popularity: nobody, it is true, had yet taken the place of Thackeray and Dickens, but George Eliot and Anthony Trollope were still alive, and George Meredith was just entering upon the era of his greatest popular success. In 1879, George Bernard Shaw was a young Irish immigrant of twenty-three, who since his arrival in London three years before had been frequenting artistic and literary circles, and who accordingly felt that his talents and his rich experience of life could find a triumphant issue in the writing of novels. Until 1883 he devoted himself almost entirely to the realization of this purpose. The results were, at least, a tribute to his pertinacity and industry; undeterred by a monotonous succession of refusals from unenlightened publishers, he continued “to fill five pages ... a day, rain or shine, dull or inspired,” and in five years turned out five novels. Today the novels have taken their place in the Standard Edition, not merely as the juveniliaof a great artist, but as works that have considerable merit in their own right. I do not propose, however, to follow those critics who have sought to add another reputation to the many that Shaw has already acquired and have thrust him, belatedly, into the ranks of the great English novelists. It is my purpose rather to show how invaluable these early works are for the understanding of Shaw's intellectual and artistic development.