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Bernard Shaw, born in Dublin in 1856, was essentially shy, yet created the persona of G.B.S., the showman, controversialist, satirist, critic, pundit, wit, intellectual buffoon and dramatist. Commentators brought a new adjective into the English language: Shavian, a term used to embody all his brilliant qualities. After his arrival in London in 1876 he became an active Socialist and a brilliant platform speaker. He wrote on many social aspects of the day: on Commonsense about the War (1914), How to Settle the Irish Question (1917), and The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928). He undertook his own education at the British Museum and consequently became keenly interested in cultural subjects. Thus his prolific output included music, art and theatre reviews which were collected into several volumes: Music In London 1890-1894 (3 vols., 1931); Pen Portraits and Reviews (1931); and Our Theatres in the Nineties (3 vols., 1931). He wrote five novels and some shorter fiction including The Black Girl in Search of God and some Lesser Tales and Cashel Byron's Profession. He conducted a strong attack on the London theatre and was closely associated with the intellectual revival of British theatre. His many plays fall into several categories: 'Plays Pleasant'; 'Plays Unpleasant'; comedies, chronicle-plays, 'metabiological Pentateuch' (Back to Methuselah, a series of plays) and 'political extravaganzas'. G.B.S. died in 1950. from: www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc18.htm Here is more from another source: www.sparknotes.com Born in Dublin in 1856 to a middle-class Protestant family bearing pretensions to nobility (Shaw's embarrassing alcoholic father claimed to be descended from Macduff, the slayer of Macbeth), George Bernard Shaw grew to become what some consider the second greatest English playwright, behind only Shakespeare. Others most certainly disagree with such an assessment, but few question Shaw's immense talent or the play's that talent produced. Shaw died at the age of 94, a hypochondriac, socialist, anti-vaccinationist, semi-feminist vegetarian who believed in the Life Force and only wore wool. He left behind him a truly massive corpus of work including about 60 plays, 5 novels, 3 volumes of music criticism, 4 volumes of dance and theatrical criticism, and heaps of social commentary, political theory, and voluminous correspondence. And this list does not include the opinions that Shaw could always be counted on to hold about any topic, and which this flamboyant public figure was always most willing to share. Shaw's most lasting contribution is no doubt his plays, and it has been said that "a day never passes without a performance of some Shaw play being given somewhere in the world." One of Shaw's greatest contributions as a modern dramatist is in establishing drama as serious literature, negotiating publication deals for his highly popular plays so as to convince the public that the play was no less important than the novel. In that way, he created the conditions for later playwrights to write seriously for the theater. Of all of Shaw's plays, Pygmalion is without the doubt the most beloved and popularly received, if not the most significant in literary terms. Several film versions have been made of the play, and it has even been adapted into a musical. In fact, writing the screenplay for the film version of 1938 helped Shaw to become the first and only man ever to win the much coveted Double: the Nobel Prize for literature and an Academy Award. Shaw wrote the part of Eliza in Pygmalion for the famous actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, with whom Shaw was having a prominent affair at the time that had set all of London abuzz. The aborted romance between Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle reflects Shaw's own love life, which was always peppered with enamored and beautiful women, with whom he flirted outrageously but with whom he almost never had any further relations. For example, he had a long marriage to Charlotte Payne-Townsend in which it is well known that he never touched her once. The fact that Shaw was quietly a member of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, an organization whose core members were young men agitating for homosexual liberation, might or might not inform the way that Higgins would rather focus his passions on literature or science than on women. That Higgins was a representation of Pygmalion, the character from the famous story of Ovid's Metamorphoses who is the very embodiment of male love for the female form, makes Higgins sexual disinterest all the more compelling. Shaw is too consummate a performer and too smooth in his self- presentation for us to neatly dissect his sexual background; these lean biographical facts, however, do support the belief that Shaw would have an interest in exploding the typical structures of standard fairy tales.
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| William G. Golding (1911 - 1993) William Gerald Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911. His family was progressive and it was the first source of influence for Golding's talent. He studied physics and English literature at Marlboro and Oxford University of England. From the first years of his life, he faced the atrocities of war. He also took part in the Second World War by joining the British Navy at 1940. The war, as a physical result, changed a lot W.Golding's view of life. W.Golding couldn't believe in man's innocence any longer. He found that even the children are not innocent. No one is innocent until the society and the way of his life make him to pretend that he's innocent. But sometimes, when a man is facing a difficult situation (as an example, a surviving need) then he will probably show his other nature, the dark and guilty nature.
William Golding was awarded with the BOOKER Mc CONNEL Prize, the greatest British Literature Prize. Finally in 1983, he was awarded with the NOBEL Prize for his whole offer to the Worldwide Literature. William Golding has taught also in Greece (in 60's). He always loved Greek literature, and many of his books show clearly his Greek influence. His last book, "The double tongue" (1993), was a novel about Ancient Greece and most specific about Pythia's life. Pythia was the name which used to be given to the Greek Priestess of Delphi oracle. W.Golding tried to describe a woman's life (he tried this before, when he was writing his novel "Darkness Visible" (1979)) who lived in the years of Roman Empire and she happened to be priestess in the last years of the oracle decay. Unfortunately, this book has never been finished. William Golding died in Wiltshire, England, in 1993. W.Golding's last book, finally published in 1995, but even it's just a rough draft, it affords to be a great novel. from: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6249/bio.htm Here is more from another source: English novelist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. The choice was unexpected, because the internationally famous novelist Graham Greene (1904-1991) was considered the strongest candidate from the English writers. In many works Golding has revealed the dark places of human heart, when isolated individuals or small groups are pushed into extreme situations. His work is characterized by exploration of 'the darkness of man's heart', deep spiritual and ethical questions. "Twenty-five years ago I accepted the label 'pessimist' thoughtlessly without realising that it was going to be tied to my tail, as it were, in something the way that, to take an example from another art, Rachmaninoff's famous Prelude in C sharp minor was tied to him. No audience would allow him off the concert platform until he played it. Similarly critics have dug into my books until they could come up with something that looked hopeless. I can't think why. I don't feel hopeless myself." (from Nobel Lecture, 1983) William Golding was born in the village of St. Columb Minor in Cornwall. His father was a schoolmaster who had radical convictions in politics and a strong faith in science. Golding started writing at the age of seven, but following the wishes of his parents, he studied natural sciences and English at Brasenose College, Oxford. His first book, a collection of poems, appeared a year before Golding received his B.A. After graduation Golding became a settlement house worker, and wrote plays in London. In 1939 he moved to Salisbury, where he began teaching English at Bishop Wordsworth's School. During World War II he served in the Royal Navy in command of a rocket ship. His active service included involvement in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck and participating in the Normandy invasion. After the war Golding returned to writing and teaching, with a dark view of humanity's progress. "They cried for their mothers much less often than might have been expected; they were very brown, and filthily dirty." (from Lord of the Flies) In Salisbury Golding wrote four books, but did not get them published. His novel LORD OF THE FLIES, set in the near future during wartime, was turned down by twenty-one publishes, until it finally appeared in 1954. The book became an immediate success in Britain and a bestseller among American readers in the late 1950s. In the gripping story a group of small British boys stranded on a desert island lapse into tribal battles and murder after they have lost all adult guidance. Ironically the adult world is deveasted by nuclear war. The success of the novel allowed Golding to give up teaching. Lord of the Flies was followed by THE INHERITORS (1955), which overturned H.G. Wells's Outline of History (1920) and depicted the extermination of Neanderthal man by Homo Sapiens. Neanderthals are first portrayed compassionate and communal, but they are finally led by example of the Cro-Magnons into sin and selfishness. Lok, the early Neanderthal point-of-view character, is as unrealiable narrator as Tuami, of the "new people." PINCHER MARTIN (1956) was story of a naval officer, Christopher Hadley Martin, who faces death on his torpedoed ship. Much like Ambroce Bierce's 'Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge', the story shows Christopher imagining his survival on a rock island in the middle of the ocean. The FREE FALL (1959) was set in contemporary society, focusing on an ordinary man who looks back over his past. Golding resigned in 1961 from teaching and devoted himself entirely to writing. THE SPERE (1964) was a story about the construction of a cathedral soire. Jocelyn, dean of a cathedral, has decided to erect a 400-foot spire before his death. But its construction causes sacrifice of others, treachery, and murder. From this novel Golding's work devoloped into two directions: the metaphysical with the theme of the fable like fall from childlike innocence into guilt, and the social without mythical substructure. --"...What a noble prospect the ocean is under a low sun! Only when the sun is high does the sea seem to lack the indefinable air of Painted Art which we are able to observe at sunrise and sunset." --"I am so accustomed to the sight that I do not see it. Indeed, I am grateful - if the phrase is not meaningless in the circumstances - to the oceans for another quality." --"And that is?" --"Their power of isolationg a man from his fellows." (from Rites of Passage, 1980) Among Golding's later works is the historical trilogy RITES OF PASSAGE (1980), which portayed life abroad an anciet ship of the line at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It was awarded the Booker Prize. Other parts of the trilogy were CLOSE QARTERS (1987) and FIRE DOWN BELOW (1989). Golding's novel THE PAPER MEN (1984) was about the pursuit of world-famous English novelist Wilfred Barclay by American academic Rick L. Turner. Lord of the Flies has been translated into many languages and filmed in 1963 and 1990. It is an ironic comment on R.M. Ballantyne's Coral Island, describing of a group of childred, who are evacuated from Britain because of a nuclear war. Their airplane crashes on an uninhabitated island, and all the adults are killed. The boys create their own society, which gradually degenerates from democratic, rational, and moral community to tyrannical, bloodthirsty, and evil. The older boys take control, a boy called Piggy is a target of picking. Leaders emerge, two of the older boys get killed and they begin to hunt another, just as a ship arrives. Golding's view is pessimistic: human nature is inherently violent, which reflects the mood of the post-war and post-Hitler years and comments the 19th century optimism of progress and education. The values that the boys have been raised by, are nothing compared to their desire to kill. The Lord of the Flies is Beelzebub, Prince of Devils, the source of evil outside oneself, and through his parable the author shows that man is a fallen being. - See: Daniel Defoe and Robinsonade, a story of a person marooned on a desert island. Golding was knighted in 1988. He died in Perranarworthal on June 19, 1993. Golding's last novel, THE DOUBLE TONGUE, left in draft at his death, was published in 1995. The story was set in the ancient Greece, and depicted a Delphic oracle, who witnesses the rise of the Roman power, and retreat of the Hellenistic culture. For further reading: William Golding: a Critical Study by I. Gregor and M. Kinkead-Weekes (1967); The Novels of William Golding by H.S. Babb (1973); W. Golding: Lord of the Flies by J. Whitley (1970); William Golding by S. Medcalf (1975); William Golding: Some Critical Considerations, ed. by J.I. Biles and R.D. Evans (1978); William Golding: A Structural Reading of His Fiction by Philip Redpath (187); The Modern Allegories of William Goldman by L.KL. Dickson (1990); William Golding by Lawrence S. Friedman (1992); William Golding by Pralhad A. Kulkarni (1994); The Robinsonade Tradition in Robert Michael Ballantyne's the Coral Island and William Golding's the Lord of the Flies by Karin Siegl (1996); Readings on Lord of the Flies, ed. by Clarice Swisher (1997); Language and Style in the Inheritors by David L. Hoover (1998) Selected works: POEMS, 1934 LORD OF THE FLIES, 1954, film 1963, dir. by Peter Brook; remake 1990, directed for American tv-savvy kids INHERITORS, 1955 - Perilliset PINCHER MARTIN, 1956 - radio play in 1958 ENVOY EXTRADORDINARY, 1956 (in Sometime, Never: Three Tales of Imagination) THE BRASS BUTTERFLY, 1958 (play) FREE FALL, 1960 MISS PULKINHORN, 1960 (radio play) THE ANGLO-SAXON, 1962 BREAK MY HEART, 1962 (radio play) THE SPIRE, 1964 THE HOT GATES, 1965 THE PYRAMID, 1967 THE SCORPION GOD, 1971 DARKNESS VISIBLE, 1979 RITES OF PASSAGE, 1980 - Booker Prize A MOVING TARGET, 1982 THE PAPER MEN, 1984 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNAL, 1985 CLOSE QUARTES, 1987 FIRE DOWN BELOW, 1989 - republished under the general title TO THE END OF THE EARTH in 1991 THE DOUBLE TONGUE, 1995 from: www.kirjasto.sci.fi/wgolding.htm
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