Charlotte and George Bernard Shaw collection

The collection comprises of correspondence by both George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte with the Antarctic explorers Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Ernest Henry Shackleton on non polar matters.

George Bernard Shaw was born on 26 July 1856 in Dublin. After working in an estate agency in Dublin, he moved to London in 1876, where he established his reputation as a leading art critic and became a prominent and active member of the Fabian Society, for which he composed many pamphlets. He began his literary career as a novelist, writing five novels between 1878 and 1883, all of which were initially rejected by publishers. Inspired by Henrik Ibsen, Shaw began to write plays, and his early dramas, such as Widowers Houses (1892) and Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893), attacked the social hypocrisy of the time.

From 1897 until 1903, Shaw served as a vestryman and later as a borough councillor of St. Pancras in London.

While recovering from an illness in 1898, he met Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend (1857-1943), daughter of an Irish barrister, and they married later in the same year. Shaw continued to write plays, many with political themes, including Man and Superman (1903) and Major Barbara (1905). Other important plays written by Shaw during this period were Androcles and the Lion (1912) and Pygmalion (1912).

Shaw's status as a playwright continued to grow after the First World War with plays such as Saint Joan (1923), and in 1925, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He continued to write plays and books and pamphlets on political and social issues. He died on 2 November 1950 at Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire.

The correspondence is arranged alphabetically by recipient.

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The term holograph is used when the item is wholly in the handwriting of the author. The term autograph is used when the author has signed the item.

Descriptions compiled by N. Boneham, Assistant Archivist with assistance from R. Stancombe and reference to Robert Keith Headland Antarctic Chronology, unpublished corrected revision of Chronological list of Antarctic expeditions and related historical events, (1 December 2001) Cambridge University Press (1989) ISBN 0521309034 and Dictionary of National Biography, 1941-1950, Oxford University Press, London (1959) and Nobel laureates and Spartacus and Who was who, 1941-1950, Adam & Charles Black, London (1952)

Clive Holland Manuscripts in the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, England - a catalogue, Garland Publishing New York and London (1982) ISBN 0824093941.

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