A. M. Gibbs

Published in 1919, Heartbreak House is an examination of the failings of the European leisure classes before World War I—failings that author George Bernard Shaw blamed for the war, and that he predicted would quickly lead to another, longer war. The play is set in an English country house, where representatives of every type of English society have gathered at the home of the seemingly-mad Captain Shotover. Hidebound aristocrats and cultured bohemians, wealthy capitalists and radical idealists, prim moralists and idle libertines, are all laid bare in one of Shaw’s bleakest and yet most absurd plays.

"A. M. Gibbs provides an authoritative and comprehensive account of the life, career and associations of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), one of the most eminent and influential figures of the modern age. Drawing on a wide range of published and unpublished material, the work illuminates the complex fabric of Shaw's extraordinary career as playwright, novelist, critic, orator, political activist, social commentator, avant-garde thinker and controversialist. Images of Shaw's daily private life, and of his tangled love affairs, flirtations and friendships, are intertwined with the records of his prodigiously productive career as public figure and creative writer, in a fully documented study which is both a scholarly resource and a lively biographical portrait.". "An introductory chapter explores theoretical issues in biography raised by the chronology form, and a chapter on Shaw's ancestry and family supplies new evidence about his Irish background. A Who's Who section contains thumbnail sketches of over two hundred contemporaries of Shaw who had significant associations with him."--BOOK JACKET.