Shaw obtained a clerical Job in a Dublin real-estate office in 1871. Although he found the work stultifying, he remained with the firm four and a half years. During this period he embarked on his literary career with a letter to the press on the menace of revivalism as practiced by the American evangelists Dwight Lyman Moody and Ira David Sankey (1840-1908). Letters to the press were thereafter a favorite means of expression with him.
Resolved to advance his career as a writer, Shaw went to London in 1876 and lived with his mother, who had moved there earlier. Between 1879 and 1883 he earned only £6 from his writings. He wrote five novels, all of which were rejected by publishers. Four of the novels were serialized in somewhat obscure magazines between 1884 and 1888.
In 1879 Shaw joined the Zetetical Society, a club devoted to discussions of evolution, atheism, and other topics engaging the interest of intellectual circles at the time. Although tímid at first, he conquered that weakness, became an accomplished speaker, and developed the "Shavian" wit which later was to characterize his plays. He was interested chiefly in the "conflict between science and religion" until 1882, when a speech by the American single-tax advocate Henry George turned his attention to economics. In the same year he read part of Capital, by the German revolutionist Karl Marx, and became a socialist. Until 1933 he was a frequent lecturer in behalf of socialism, and socialist idea were central in much of his writing. He joined the newly founded Fabian Society, a socialist club, in 1884, was elected almost immediately to its executive committee, and served in it until 1911. Shaw brought into the Fabian Society his personal friend the British economist, writer, and social reformer Sidney James Webb, who became a leading socialist writer. Through Webb and his wife Beatrice, also a socialist writer, he met Charlotte Payne-Townshend, an Irish heiress and Fabian, who became his wife. Shaw edited and contributed to Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889), an anthology generally considered a classic of socialist literature. His other works in that field include The Common Sense of Municipal Trading (1904), an argument for municipal management of business, and The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism (1928), a survey of contemporary civilization.
Shaw first gained a reputation in the esthetic field as a music and drama critic. He was art critic for The World in 1886-87; music critic for The Star, under the pseudonym "Como di Bassetto", from 1888 to 1890; music critic for The World from 1890 to 1894: and drama critic for The Saturday Review from 1895 to 1898. As a music critic, he championed the German composer Richard Wagner: as a drama critic, he crusaded for the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and attacked the Shakespearean productions of the British actor and theatrical manager Sir Henry Irving. In his letters to the British actress Dame Ellen Alice Terry, Shaw attempted to win her support for the new theater of ideas. His criticisms have been collected in nine volumes, the best known of which are The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891), The Sanity of Art (1895), The Perfect Wagnerite (1898), and Dramatic Opinions and Essays (1907). In addition he expressed his critical ideas in the prefaces to his plays.
Shaw's fame rests mainly upon his work as a dramatist. His plays, of which there were more than fifty, have been produced throughout the English-speaking world and translated into all major languages.
Shaw called three of his early plays "unpleasant", thereby indicating that he knew his drama of ideas and the ideas themselves were not palatable fare for conservative London audiences. The "unpleasant" plays are Widowers' Houses (1892), which depicts the clash between ideals and realities among owners of real estate; Mrs. Warren's Profesion (1893), a drama about the white-slave traffic taken as a typical capitalist enterprise; and The Philanderer (1893). In an equally frank attempt to be popular, he next turned out a series of "pleasant plays". The first, Arms and the Man (1894), a satire on romantic militarism, brought him financial independence and international recognition as a dramatist. Others in the "pleasant" series include Candida (1894), which is about a self-assured woman, a romantic poet, and a socialist clergyman; You Never Can Tell (1896) ; and The Devil's Disciple (1897). In Caesar and Cleopatra (1899) he presents Caesar as a soldier and statesman of great sagacity but vain and somewhat boyish in prívate life. In Man and Superman: a Comedy and a Philosophy (1901-03), especially in the notable scene known as "Don Juan in Hell", Shaw expounds an optimistic faith in creative evolution and the so-called life force, as well as in man's ability to create a better world by willing it and working for it. He deals in Major Barbara (1905) with the problem of wealth and poverty by depicting the disillusionment of a young major in the Salvation Army.
Shaw wrote his greatest plays during the next decade. In Heartbreak House (1919), set in an English country-house environment of the early-20th century, he treats aspects of life of that period which reflect the underlying causes of later undesirable moral an political conditions. Other outstanding works of this period are Androcles and the Lion (1913) and the pentalogy Back to Methuselah (1921). In Saint Joan (1923) he shows the nonconforming saint or, as defined in the preface, the "genius" victimized by the forces of church and state.
Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925. In his last plays the recurrent theme is politics or international relations; of these the best known are probably The Apple Cart (1929), Geneva (1938), and In Good King Charles's Golden Days (1939).
Shaw found the English theater given over largely to sentimental comedy and sensational melodrama; he made it a vehicle for the expression of contemporary thought. His vigorous style, enhanced by his musical and oratorical background and his love of fine workmanship, is a model for all who wish to treat serious matters in the drama without solemnity. His power to create original dialogue and striking characterization in colorful situations is especially notable. Despite the fact that his plays deal extensively with ideas, many contain scenes of deep feeling. His unique Shavian style expressed in the main irreverence for tradition, maddening self-assurance, satiric humor, contempt for current morality, championship of the unpopular and persecuted, and amazing vitality. Although his style and artistic method have not profoundly affected the English and American theater, he is the only dramatist of the past century who can be compared to William Shakespeare as the spokesman of an era.
