Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics by George Bernard Shaw.

Full Text Search Details
...PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA FIRST AID TO CRITICS BY BERNARD SHAW A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication... ...tronic Classics Series Publication Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics by George Bernard Shaw is a publication of the Pennsylvania State U... ...lectronic transmission, in any way. Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics by George Bernard Shaw, the Pennsylvania State University, Electron... ...al in that sense than a tree can grow out of air. Another mistake as to my literary ancestry is made when- ever I violate the romantic convention that... ...e Socialist revival of the eighteen-eighties brought me into contact, both literary and personal, with Mr Ernest Belfort Bax, an English Socialist and... ...d instructive pamphleteering, even when done by the most earnest and witty literary geniuses, were as useless as praying, things going steadily from b... ...heir competitors can do to them. The history of the English factories, the American trusts, the exploitation of African gold, diamonds, ivory and rub-... ...om time to time by violent ex- plosions of revolution; so the attempt—will Americans please note—to found moral institutions on a basis of moral in- e... ...but unnatural Reigns of the Saints relieved by licentious Restorations; to Americans who have made divorce a public institution turning the face of Eu...

Full Text Search Details
...youth of missionary parents, earned enough money to pay his expenses at an American college. Equipped with this small sum and the earnestness that the... ...he distinction of translation into more languages, I think, than any other American book; and I suppose that he has as large a per- sonal acquaintance... ...this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially,... ...le hour of their time. Some years ago I was to deliver an address before a literary society in Madison, Wis. An hour before the time set for me to spe... ...rt of the address. I replied to him in a letter which seemed to satisfy my critics. In this letter I said that I had made it a rule never to say befor...

Full Text Search Details
...he mouth of Mrs Knox I have delivered on them the judgment of her God. The critics whom I have lampooned in the induction to this play under the names... ...ch Mr Claude King so suc- cessfully simulated his personal appearance. The critics whom I did not introduce were somewhat hurt, as I should have been ... ...In so far as it was effectual, it operated as a measure of relief to those critics and playgoers who are so obsessed by my strained legendary reputati... ...cked—in fact theyve never been opened since we came from Venice—and as our literary guests will probably use the li- brary a good deal, I just ran in ... ...yself. It’s not an old man’s job after all, is it? Bannal may not ride the literary high horse like T rotter and the rest; but I’ d take his opinion b... ...ck you soundly and pack you off to bed. FANNY. Thats one of your prettiest literary attitudes, Mr Trotter; but it doesnt take me in. You see, I’m much... ...lf, or even to remain in the Guards in competi- tion with the grandsons of American millionaires, I could not have aspired to Miss Knox’s hand. But as...

Full Text Search Details
... idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagina... ...r of thought and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done ... ...t we can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon ev- ery book a... ...s he looked out of this window, when he looked out of that,—whip him.” Our American character is marked by a more than average delight in accurate per... ...not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers. Among the multitude of scholars and aut... ...a piece of science but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not ... ... majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and the architecture. The critics who complain of the sickly separation of the beauty of nature from ...

Full Text Search Details
...y sometimes see the curious circular nests of the Lamprey Eel, Petromyzon Americanus, the American Stone Sucker, as large as a cart wheel, a foot or ... ...d, and referring him to some new ge nealogy. “Son of——and——. He aided the Americans to gain their independence, instructed mankind in economy, and dr... ... labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simp... ...an axe or a sword. When we consider the weak and nerveless periods of some literary men, who perchance in feet and inches come up to the standard of t... ...moral grandeur and sub limity akin to those of his own Scriptures. T o an American reader, who, by the advantage of his posi tion, can see over that... ...orner of it which he inhabits. One of the rarest of England’s scholars and critics, in his classification of the worthies of the world, betrays the na... ...ose heathen, who sternly believed somewhat, and are inclined to say to the critics, who are offended by their superstitious rites,— Don’t interrupt th... ..., and were autochthones of the soil. Chaucer had eminently the habits of a literary man and a scholar. There were never any times so stirring that the...

Full Text Search Details
...ones in hand, with the result that I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns as Johnson did when he should have been shaking E... ...f it for the sake of my health by the teachers; for the children to whom a literary education can be of any use are insatiable: they will read and stu... ...nterrupt me here with the remark that many children have no appetite for a literary education at all, and would never open a book if they were not for... ...ry art. The reason why the con- tinental European is, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant of the Bible, is that the authorized En-... ... disagreeable noise if there is a thread of music in the middle of it (few critics of the phonograph seem to be conscious of the very considerable mec...

Full Text Search Details
................................................................. 36 LUKE THE LITERARY ARTIST .............................................................. ...now becomes arrogant, dictatorial, and even abusive, never replying to his critics without an in- sulting epithet, and even cursing a fig-tree which d... ... whole Mark leaves the modern reader where Matthew left him. LUKE LUKE THE LITERARY ARTIST WHEN WE COME to Luke, we come to a later storyteller, and o... ...mple a matter strikes one with distrust and dislike, in spite of his great literary charm, a good example of which is his transfiguration of the harsh... ...e been made, or else have had to confess to the Jews, who were the keenest critics of the Christians, that Jesus was either an impostor or the victim ... ...n practically all the white inhabitants of the British Isles and the North American continent, to mention no other places) are condemned in the words,...

Full Text Search Details
...tent, if not insincere. This is the prevailing attitude of politicians and literary men. Must one conclude that the mass of mankind has lost touch wit... ... of existence. He found himself entirely out of sympathy with the group of literary men who gathered round him, with Turgenev at their head. In Tolsto... ...letely disil lusioned both in regard to his great contemporary and to the literary world of St. Petersburg, shook off the dust of the capital, and, a... ...ations, his nationality. Such a key is peculiarly necessary to English or American students of Tolstoy, because of the marked contrast existing be t... ...f the marked contrast existing be tween the Russian and the Englishman or American in these respects, a contrast by which Tolstoy himself was forcibl... ... to concentrate his thoughts on the land question. He began by reading the American propagandist’s “Social Problems,” which arrested his attention by ... ...he misunderstandings of Tolstoy’s later years have also been attributed by critics, and by those who hate or belittle his ideas, to the influ ence of...

Full Text Search Details
...ugh. His name, long familiar everywhere, has now awakened the attention of critics in all European countries to his works: he is studied wherever true... ...and whoever among us shall step forward, with such knowledge as our common critics have of Goethe, to enlighten 5 Goethe the European public, by cont... ... in the ways of all men, which qualify him to stand forth, not only as the literary ornament, but in many respects too as the T eacher and exem- plar ... ...hich some knowledge of him may be obtained. A slight glance at his general literary character and procedure, and one or two of his chief productions w... ... time; to offer the instruction, the solace, which that time required. His literary life divides itself into two portions widely different in characte... ...cene in Auerbach’s cellar. Egmont was also begun under the stimulus of the American Rebel- lion. A way of escaping from his embarrassments was unex- p... ...in which Corneille and Racine are obliged to defend themselves against the critics and public. Here at least I plainly saw that no man knew what he wa... ...Huguenots, who settled there after the revocation of the edict of Nantes.— American Note. 235 Goethe me. Her ill health kept her constantly at home. ... ...g class of men in England or America, which would justify an English word.—American Note. 328 Autobiography tained; which he very soon managed to gai...

Full Text Search Details
...EPARATION of a Second Edition of this booklet is quite the most unexpected literary task that has ever been set me. When it first appeared I was ungra... ...48 are taught neither by the education nor the experience of En- glish and American gentlemen-amateurs, who are almost al- ways political mugwumps, an... ...and political mugwump that the term “art- ist” seems to suggest to so many critics and amateurs—that is, a creature in their own lazy likeness—he need... ...y is a cave, in which he hides from the light like the eyeless fish of the American caverns. Before the cur- tain rises the music already tells us tha... ...s definitely conscious of his thesis as I. All the stupid people, and some critics who, though not stupid, had not themselves written what the Germans... ...d its pro- gressions saturate themselves with the emotion which (as modern critics are a little apt to forget) springs as warmly from our delicately t... ...y susceptible to the dramatic and descriptive pow- ers of sound. A race of literary and theatrical musicians ap- peared; and Meyerbeer, the first of t... ...know how inevitable and how impersonal Wagner’s attack was. Wagner was the literary musician par excellence. He could not, like Mozart and Beethoven, ...

Full Text Search Details
...gradually. It is but of yesterday that women have either been qualified by literary accomplishments or permitted by society, to tell anything to the g... ...blic. As yet very few of them dare tell anything, which men, on whom their literary success depends, are un willing to hear. Let us remember in what ... ... is not so often the L case as, even at a quite late period, it still was. Literary women I are becoming more free spoken, and more willing to express... ...remedied. Already, in many of the new and several of the old States of the American Confederation, provisions have been inserted even in the written C... ...ts main features, an imita tion of men’s. Why is the Roman literature, as critics proclaim to satiety, not original, but an imitation of the Greek? S...

Full Text Search Details
...h to a greater extent than the latter. So it comes, for instance, that the American farmer and his wife and daughters are notoriously less modish in t... ...s the French peasant-pro- prietor parsimonious and frugal, and induces the American millionaire to found colleges, hospitals and museums. If the canon... ...ese na- tional or popular costumes are in most cases adjudged by competent critics to be more becoming, more artistic, than the fluctuating styles of ... ...l of the corset is not infrequent among the higher social classes of those American cities, for instance, which have recently and rapidly risen into o... ...interpretations of the classics, especially such as have a philological or literary bearing only. Except within the domain of the “humanities”, in the...

Full Text Search Details
...Mr. Beebe was walking up to the Torre del Gallo with the Emersons and some American ladies. Would Miss Bartlett and Miss Honeychurch join the party? C... ...that a girl should feel deeply. “It is I who am sorry,” said Miss Lavish. “literary hacks are shameless creatures. I believe there’s no se- cret of th... ...they mix up towns, rivers, palaces in one inextricable whirl. You know the American girl in Punch who says: ‘Say, poppa, what did we see at Rome?’ And... ...ide, perfect seclu- sion. One might have gone back six hundred years. Some critics believe that her garden was the scene of The Decameron, which lends... ...to tell Miss Honeychurch that on the right lived Mr. Someone Something, an American of the best type —so rare!—and that the Somebody Elses were farthe... ..., Lucy; it is useless to contradict me. No doubt I am neither artistic nor literary nor intellec- tual nor musical, but I cannot help the drawing-room...

Full Text Search Details
...- nies to twirl it by steam. Glare is a leading error in the philosophy of American house- hold decoration—an error easily recognised as deduced from ... ...- tween a London populace and that of the most frequented 35 V olume Five American city. A second turn brought us into a square, bril- liantly lighte... .... Every fiction should have a moral; and, what is more to the purpose, the critics have discovered that every fiction has. Philip Melanchthon, some ti... ...s moral. It is there—that is to say, it is somewhere—and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves. When the proper time ar- rives, all th... ...ral tale, or, in more precise words, a tale with a moral. They are not the critics predestined to bring me out, and de- 39 V olume Five velop my mora... ... 39 V olume Five velop my morals:—that is the secret. By and by the “North American Quarterly Humdrum” will make them ashamed of their stupidity. In t... ...rted into a species of hap-hazard note-book—that is to say, into a kind of literary arena for the conflicting guesses, riddles, and personal squabbles... ...ially for the ease of the general manner. This “ease” or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long been the fashion to regard as ease in appearanc... ...fate, Poe presented a copy of “Annabel Lee” to the editor of the “Southern Literary Mes- senger,” who published it in the November number of his pe- r...

Full Text Search Details
...er did anything 5 John Stuart Mill negligently; never undertook any task, literary or other, on which he did not conscientiously bestow all the labou... ...s difficulties, and in Paoli, the Corsican patriot; but when I came to the American War, I took my part, like a child as I was (until set right by my ... ...sistence. Those who have to support themselves by their pen must depend on literary drudgery, or at best on writings addressed to the multitude; and c... ...l powers of a person used to abstract thought, or to the labour of careful literary composition. The draw backs, for every mode of life has its drawb... ...n of centralization. The powerful philosophic analysis which he applied to American and to French experience, led him to attach the utmost importance ... ... the Review. Immediately on its pub lication, and before the commonplace critics, all whose rules and modes of judgment it set at defiance, had time... ...he most elaborate is entitled Elements of Individualism: and a remarkable American, Mr. Warren, had framed a System of Society, on the foundation of ...

Full Text Search Details
...mperament of a schoolmaster and the pursuits of a vestryman. No doubt that literary knack of mine which happens to amuse the British public distracts ... ...last words of the XVIII century on the subject; and by the time the polite critics of the XIX century, ignoring William Blake as superfi- cially as th... ... and then disparage it as unworthy and indelicate. We laugh at the haughty American nation be- cause it makes the negro clean its boots and then prove... ...omplicated by the genius being a woman, then the game is one for a king of critics: your George Sand becomes a mother to gain experience for the novel... ..., and the more I see of the efforts of our churches and univer- sities and literary sages to raise the mass above its own level, the more convinced I ... ...ich requires a whole popu- lation of capable voters: that is, of political critics who, if they cannot govern in person for lack of spare energy or sp... ...ng about our imperial destiny; but our eyes and hearts turn eagerly to the American millionaire. As his hand goes down to his pocket, our fingers go u... ...ighton and the south coast with the Riviera, for the spending money of the American T rusts. What is all this growing love of pag- eantry, this effusi... ... Shaw lettres, and for amateurs who become the heroes of the fan- ciers of literary virtuosity, is not founded on any illusion of mind as to the perma...

Full Text Search Details
...action and simplicity, and complete absence of life, action and simplicity—literary and argumen- tative artisans and repulsive coquetry with them: ‘Fe... ... between two insurrections. There is something of Anarchism in his lack of literary order. His best- known work is a fragment entitled by its editors ... ...been done under trade-union conditions, have played a considerable part in American labor struggles. Sabotage is the practice of doing bad work, or sp... ...of violence and revolution, is the work of Mr. John Graham Brooks, called “American Syndicalism: the I. W. W.” (Macmillan, 1913). American labor condi... ...fferent from any that arises in Europe. The older skilled workers, largely American born, have long been organized in the American Federation of Labor... ... fire of the militia, a number of women and children were burned to death.[Literary Digest, May 2 and May 16, 1914.] Many other instances of pitched b... ... society is being considered. 93 Bertrand Russell Socialist and Anarchist critics of existing society point, with perfect truth, to certain capitalis... ...e to the power of the Press. The Press is the second great factor to which critics of capi- talism point when they wish to prove that capitalism is th... ...capitalism in promoting war, there is another, much less emphasized by the critics of capi- talism, but by no means less important: I mean the pugnaci...

Full Text Search Details
...ight be secured. It was believed also that from writers mainly British and American fuller consideration of English Philosophy than it had hith- erto ... ...nti-materialistic tendency of physics is the view of William James and the American new realists, according to which the “stuff” of the world is neith... ...ing that could be called “experi- ence.” This word has been dropped by the American realists, among whom we may mention specially Professor R. B. Perr... ... sensations does. Bodily sensations are ad- mitted by even the most severe critics of introspection, al- though, like images, they can only be observe... ...will be affected by it in the way intended. This is a psychological, not a literary, definition of “correctness.” The literary definition would substi...