Major Political Writings

A new collection of Shaw’s major political writings presents an opportunity to reflect on his influential role as a public intellectual. At the forefront of economic and political debate from the 1880s to the 1950s, George Bernard Shaw was once the most widely read socialist writer in the English language, and his lifelong crusade against inequality and exploitation is far from irrelevant today. The thorough interpenetration of Shaw’s literary and political engagements is an unusual story in modern literature, and this volume offers a portrait of Shaw as a political artist in the purest possible sense: that is, as a writer of essays, articles, pamphlets, and books with explicitly and expressly political aims. The selected writings in this volume showcase Shaw’s most influential and most accomplished political work, but also provide a cross-section that is representative of the whole of his long career.