Routledge Shaw – “The Chucker Out”: A Biographical Exposition and Critique (Routledge Library Editions: George Bernard Shaw)

Originally published in 1969, in Shaw – “The Chucker Out” Allan Chappelow quotes much entirely new and previously unpublished Shaw material (the fruits of six years’ research at the British Museum and elsewhere) as the basis for his aim of assisting towards a better understanding of Shaw’s controversial character and his paradoxical attitude to life – with reference particularly to certain fallacies and misconceptions voiced by the villagers of Ayot St. Lawrence (during their otherwise favourable memoirs in Shaw the Villager) and shared by the world at large. This book threw a flood of new light on Shaw and the world in which he lived. It included new examples of Shaw’s finest and noblest pronouncements as well as of his more controversial obiter dicta, and a special feature is the way in which the development of Shaw’s ideas is shown during his exceptionally long career occupying three-quarters of a century, from his first published (and unpublished) writings in 1875 till his last in 1950. Here is Shaw at his most stimulating and entertaining (even when deliberately shocking for effect!), and many of his views – on stage censorship for example, or on making strikes illegal – were as topical and relevant in 1969 as when he propounded them. In Shaw – “The Chucker Out” the reader will find (in addition to the opening chapter which presents Shaw’s printed postcards and ‘stock letter’ replies) much new material on Shaw’s attitude to peace and war, on his ‘new alphabet’ and his succession of Wills, rare love letters and other evidence of Shaw’s attitude to sex, unique speeches on the art of the theatre and on the conduct of life, and perhaps most important of all, a most fascinating panorama of Shaw’s views on the full gamut of political themes. The subjects range through Socialism and Capitalism, Christian Economics, Democracy and Dictators, Fascism and Equality of Income, Sedition, Trade Unionism, Women in Politics, and Communism. The book’s appeal is not only to those interested in Shaw and literature, but also as a general sociological and philosophical study of the main political, social, and moral outlooks of the world at the time, in which little-known views of many of Shaw’s contemporaries and critics are given as well as his own. Most people are bewildered by the conflict in life between ideals and illusions, and not a few have been perplexed by the contrast between the unquestionable brilliance of many of Bernard Shaw’s views and the sometimes facetious statements of the clown in him. Allan Chappelow skilfully sifts the wheat from the chaff; as Vera Brittain points out, this book goes a long way towards clarification, and it seemed likely to become a standard work.