(1856 - 1950)
His first four novels having been rejected by British publishers, George Bernard Shaw wrote polemics for the left-wing, idealistic Fabian Society in the 1880s before finding steady work as a London music critic. In 1905, at the age of forty-eight, Shaw achieved international success with his play John Bull’s Other Island when it was given a bespoke performance for Edward VII.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1886A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903Miscellany
The first known “laboratory rat” was used in 1828 in an experiment about fasting. Guinea pigs have been put to scientific use since the 1780s, when Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier measured their heat production. The first recorded usage of guinea pig to liken a person or a thing to a test subject was in 1891, by George Bernard Shaw in his book The Quintessence of Ibsenism.
