Life and work
Criticism, public debate, and the playhouse.
In London, Shaw pursued a wide-ranging self-directed education and became deeply engaged with music, art, literature, and theatre. His reviews of music and drama were later collected in volumes that show both the breadth of his interests and his appetite for challenging received opinion.
He was also active in socialist politics and wrote on many of the social questions of his period. Across essays, lectures, criticism, and plays, he repeatedly examined class, work, marriage, public institutions, and the habits of modern life.
Shaw criticized what he saw as complacency in the London theatre, while helping to advance a more intellectually ambitious dramatic culture. His plays include comedies, social dramas, historical works, political satires, and the large-scale dramatic sequence Back to Methuselah. He died in 1950.
