Bernard Shaw was one of the most important, and certainly the most prolific, reform writers of the twentieth century. In provocative, trenchant, and humorous style he tried to formulate a constructive alternative to the sham ideals of the Victorian age. His ideal vision was of a classless society based on equality of income and opportunity regardless of sex, creed, race, or birth, and he attempted to combine this vision with a realistic assessment of the facts of social and political life.

George Bernard Shaw was born on 26 July 1856 in Upper Synge Street, Dublin, the third child and only son of George Carr and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw. His father was an unsuccessful grain merchant whose addiction to alcohol was the inspiration behind Shaw's lifelong teetotalism. His mother, a ladylike, highly educated young woman from the Protestant gentry, compensated for her disappointment in her husband by concentrating her attentions...