The Real Bernard Shaw

THIS is not to be taken as a biography. The biographical material is merely so much as will hold the work together, but it is quite enough to give the public all it needs to know about the private life of Mr. Shaw, and all it has any conceivable right to inquire into. The book is a careful study of Mr. Shaw in his various public capacities, as playwright, critic, economist, moralist, and so on. We admire Mr. Colbourne’s work; it is conspicuously thorough, objective, sympathetic, and in unfailing good taste. His exposition of what he calls the New Economics is manifestly lugged in by the ears; it strikes us as sheer nonsense; but that is a matter of only half-a-dozen pages, and is easily got over. On the whole, it would not surprise us if Mr. Colbourne’s estimate of Mr. Shaw turned out to be pretty nearly definitive.