Boyle, Ken

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was a prolific dramatist, critic, essayist, pamphleteer and social reformer. The shy, idealistic Irishman separated himself from his opinionated public persona, ‘G. B. S.’, and his eccentric alter ego and his work were the vehicles for his social and political ideals. He was a member of the socialist Fabian Society from its founding and edited Fabian Essays. Most of his early plays were banned because of their political content. His outspokenness made him unpopular in England for a time but his spreading worldwide fame made it easier for him to voice his views.

Plays, such as Mrs Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Pygmalion and St Joan, his essays and letters, his outspoken opinions, great wit and charisma made him a celebrity and his name has even passed into the English language in the word ‘Shavian’. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

Author David Ross has written a biography of Shaw that is exceptionally readable and entertaining. The life, wit and prolific achievements of this Irish icon are conveyed with insight and understanding.

The Dublin-born dramatist, essayist, poet and novelist, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900), was as unconventional as he was brilliant. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin and at Magdalen College, Oxford, displaying an outstanding mind, a sharp wit and a contempt for conformity. He became an advocate of the doctrine of art for art’s sake and courted controversy with his flamboyant and decadent public image. Celebrated for his wit and pathos, Wilde today is perhaps best known for his play The Importance of Being Earnest.

His conviction and imprisonment for homosexuality was the beginning of a slow physical decline that eventually brought about his death in 1900. Wilde left behind him a remarkable body of work. This exceptionally charismatic and talented man left an influence on our culture that has been immense.

Author David Pritchard has written a highly readable, frank and sympathetic biography of the cultural and literary legacy of one of the most paradoxical characters, and one of the most brilliant intellects, of the nineteenth century.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. A writer of verse since his teenage years, it was the publishing of The Wanderings of Oisin (1889) that brought him his first favourable reviews and established a reputation that was to grow and grow. His early poems are distinguished by images from the legends of Celtic mythology and by a lyrical directness and a wish to communicate with the Irish people. His involvement in Irish nationalist politics, and his unrequited love for the revolutionary Maud Gonne, inspired the poetry of his middle years. His later work is bleaker, more elaborate in style and theory than his early work, and is heavily influenced by the symbolism of the occult.

Largely responsible for founding Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, home of the Irish National Theatre Society established in 1901, Yeats wrote several fine plays that were performed there. He was made a senator of the Irish Free State in 1922 and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

Author David Ross has written an engaging and accessible biography of W.B. Yeats. Given the huge range of Yeats’ interests – poetry, philosophy, history, mysticism and politics – and his eventful personal and public lives, Ross has deftly captured the spirit of the man and his work, relationships and beliefs.