George Bernard Shaw was born in 1856 in Dublin to an unsuccessful grain merchant and a music teacher who eventually left for London, taking young Shaw with her. He rejected formal schooling, worked in an estate office, then threw himself into London's socialist circles, vegetarianism, and the Fabian Society, where his pamphlets argued for gradual reform rather than revolution. Music criticism and theater reviews paid his bills while he honed a prose style of paradox and provocation.

Shaw's plays refused Victorian sentiment. Pygmalion turned class mobility into comedy by teaching a flower girl to pass as a duchess; Mrs. Warren's Profession confronted prostitution; Major Barbara linked religion with munitions manufacturing. He insisted on lengthy prefaces that explained his ideas as thoroughly as the dramas enacted them. Man and Superman introduced the concept of the Life Force, while Saint Joan treated Joan of Arc as a revolutionary proto-Protestant rather than a sentimental martyr.

Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925— which he accepted only after initial refusal— Shaw remained prolific into old age, corresponding with dictators and democrats alike and never abandoning his role as public irritant. He died in 1950 at Ayot St Lawrence after a fall in his garden, having left a body of more than fifty plays that made the stage a forum for ethical argument dressed in laughter.

1. 1876

   Arrival in London

   Moved to London and began writing novels, criticism, and socialist tracts.

2. 1894

   Arms and the Man

   Achieved West End success with an anti-romantic war comedy.

3. 1912

   Pygmalion Premiered

   Opened the play that became his most enduring popular work.

4. 1925

   Nobel Prize

   Awarded the literature prize while continuing to publish controversial prefaces.

5. 1950

   Death in Hertfordshire

   Died at ninety-four after injuring his leg while pruning trees.