Considered one of the greatest English-speaking dramatists, George Bernard Shaw was born July 26, 1856, in Dublin, Ireland, and had a long and productive life. He was the only son and youngest of three children born to George Carr and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw, who were Irish Protestant gentry. Shaw's education involved tutoring from an uncle and at a series of schools, but he quit school at fifteen to work in an estate agent's office for five years. In 1876, he went to London to join his sister and his mother, who had left Shaw's alcoholic father to pursue careers in music.

Shaw was supported by his mother and sister as he wrote five unsuccessful novels. In 1888, he became the music critic for a newspaper, and then in 1895, he took a position as the drama critic at the Saturday Review, a position he held for three years. A devotee...