SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, Vol. 6

by Stanley Weintraub (Editor)

Carrying on the off-beat and far-ranging tradition of Shaw, this sixth volume opens with an account of the identification and naming of Pointe Bernard Shaw, a peninsula in northern Quebec, whose form viewed from the air resembles the famous Shaw profile, as shown in an accompanying photograph. Here also are a classic comparison of Shaw's activities during the First World War with those of Jonathan Swift during the years of the War of the Spanish Succession, exhibiting the belief of each that literary work should not exist in an aesthetic vacuum; a study of the enlargement of Shaw's intellectual world through his contacts with Albert Einstein; the discovery of the almost certain source of Jennifer Dubedat in Doctor's Dilemma in a strikingly attractive Australian widow; a moving account of the long friendship of Shaw and Laurence Housman, with Housman's drawing of Shaw; a speculation about the true mystery of Candida, celebrating as it does the birth of a poet's art; firsthand accounts by contemporary actresses such as Wendy Hiller, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, and Barbara Jefford on their experience of playing Shaw's St. Joan; and two previously unpublished scintillating Shaw pieces, one of these a futuristic fantasy that is a rare piece of Shavian prose fiction.

188 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1986

About the author

Weintraub was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 17, 1929. He was the eldest child of Benjamin and Ray Segal Weintraub. He attended South Philadelphia High School, and then he attended West Chester State Teachers College (now West Chester University of Pennsylvania) where he received his B.S. in education in 1949. He continued his education at Temple University where he received his master's degree in English “in absentia,” as he was called to duty in the Korean War.

He received a commission as Army Second Lieutenant, and served with the Eighth Army in Korea receiving a Bronze Star.

After the War, he enrolled at Pennsylvania State University in September 1953; his doctoral dissertation “Bernard Shaw, Novelist” was accepted on May 6, 1956.

Except for visiting appointments, he remained at Penn State for all of his career, finally attaining the rank of Evan Pugh Professor of Arts and Humanities, with emeritus status on retirement in 2000. From 1970 to 1990 he was also Director of Penn State’s Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies