Bernard Shaw, Vol. 2: The Pursuit of Power, 1898-1918

Bernard Shaw #2

by Michael Holroyd

Michael Holroyd began his multivolume biography of Shaw with The Search for Love, published in 1988. The second volume, The Pursuit of Power, is the story of Shaw in his prime. He has put behind him the disappointments of his Irish childhood, as well as the years of his anonymity in London, and started on the terrible adventure of marriage. By 1914 the author of Pygmalion has become the most popular writer in England.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Theatre, History

422 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Michael Holroyd is the author of acclaimed biographies of George Bernard Shaw, the painter Augustus John, Lytton Strachey, and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, as well as two memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. Knighted for his services to literature, he is the president emeritus of the Royal Society of Literature and the only nonfiction writer to have been awarded the David Cohen British Prize for Literature. His previous book, A Strange Eventful History, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography in 2009. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/michae...

Reviews

[Wilbur · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stunning amount of information.

[Chris Fellows · Rating 3 out of 5]

How did I come to read volume 2 of a multivolume biography of Bernard Shaw without reading volume 1? Well, it was on display in the used bookstore on campus, and most days I would walk past it and see those intense eyes staring at me from the front cover. So after a few weeks I went in and picked it up; and found it was only $5. I read it during lunch in lieu of newpapers, and very entertaining it was, too; almost entirely due to Shaw's own words, of course. I couldn't see any rhyme or reason to where it started or finished: it isn't really a stand alone volume, just an arbitrary slice of story that starts in media res and ends abruptly. But it was kind of exhilarating to be immediately plunged into a whirlwind of characters and having to try and figure them out.

Reading this inspired me to read "Ann Veronica" and "Androcles and the Lion", and I will probably now go back and re-read my copy of Beatrice Webb's autobiography to see how the same events looked from another perspective. I'll also probably re-read Chesterton's biography of Shaw, which I've read several times and strongly coloured my reading of this volume. It was interesting to see the picture of Shaw, Chesterton, and Belloc together in this book, in which Shaw looked by *far* the most jolly.