The Complete Prefaces: 1930-1950

"This is Volume II, covering the years 1914-29, of a three-part edition, which will be the first to bring together all of Shaw's prefaces (several hitherto unpublished). They are assembled chronologically and are provided with annotation of elusive topical references, through the meticulous but judicious editing of Dan H. Laurence and Daniel J. Leary." "The prodigious range of subjects - children's rights, creative evolution, capital punishment, blood sport, the nature of sainthood, the Irish question - remains as topical as this morning's newspaper columns. Shaw's concerns about human possibilities, and the greed, insularity and blindness that obstruct those possibilities, are as applicable today as they were a century ago." "To H. M. Tomlinson, Shaw possessed a 'passionate morality that happens to be gifted with the complete control of expression'. His energetic prose is ardent, rhythmic, brimming with vitality and bursting with humour. Moreover, Shaw's voice defies time, linked as it is to a tradition extending back to the English translators of the Bible, through Dryden and Swift, to Dickens, while managing to be outrageously idiosyncratic and couched in a diction that uniquely anticipates the evolution of the language itself."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved