George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin and emigrated to London in 1876. He largely educated himself using the resources at the British Museum and became keenly interested in music, art and theatre of which his many articles and collections of essays in these fields bear proof. Addressing issues such as war, poverty and women's rights, Shaw's plays expounded the problems created by capitalism. His status as a playwright continued to grow after the First World War with plays such as Saint Joan (1923) and in 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. George Bernard Shaw died in 1950.