George Bernard Shaw was an iconoclastic writer and speaker who embraced many subjects that his peers had not yet dared to embrace. He is considered to be the best and most significant playwright since William Shakespeare. His life and career were focused mainly on social reform.Bernard was born on July 26, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland. His parents were mother Lucinda Elizabeth Garly and father George Carr Shaw. His father and grandfather were both alcoholics. His mother was from Carlow. She was a musically gifted and taught singing and music lessons (Kunitz 1268). Bernard was the third and youngest sibling in his family. He had two older sisters (Weintraub 655). Bernard’s father’s and grandfather’s alcoholism caused Bernard to hate both alcohol and tobacco. His abstaining from drugs also led him to be a vegetarian, an animal rights activist and to be against using medical vaccinations (Kunitz 1268).During Bernard’s teenage years, his uncle tutored him. He attended many different schools off and on, but his real education is said to have come from his mother’s love of music, art, and drama (Kunitz 1268). When he was in his early teens, Bernard’s mother left his father. She moved to London to further pursue a musical career, though all she ever did was teach music. She took Bernard’s sisters with her, and Bernard followed some years later (Kunitz 1268).In London, he, his mother, and his sisters were poverty stricken for the next ten years, until he started making money from being a drama critic in a London newspaper (Kunitz 1268). At the age of fifteen, while still living in Ireland, Bernard took an apprenticeship job at a real estate company (Kunitz 1268). He started writing around 1876, when he moved to London to be with his mother. Bernard wrote five fictitious novels in the next decade. Only two were published; none were successful. This was his first attempt at writing fiction (...
