Bernard Shaw - Volume I - 1856-1898 - The Search for Love; Volume II - 1898-1918 - The Pursuit of Power; Volume III - 1918-1950 - The Lure of Fantasy

London: Chatto and Windus, 1988. 3 VOLUME SET. Gilt title and facsimile signature on black boards. All volumes Fine and unmarked with Fine dustjackets, one of which is price clipped. Volume I - viii + 486 pages. 37 illustrations ISBN 0701133325 Second Impression 1988. Volume II - ix + 422 pages. 38 illustrations ISBN 0701133503 First Impression 1989. Volume III - ix + 544 pages. 43 illustrations ISBN 0701133511 First Impression 1991. In Vol. I with sympathetic insight Michael Holroyd takes us from Bernard Shaw's birth in 1856, his early days in Dublin, through a series of love affairs, to his marriage in 1898. Then following his mother to London tried his hand at writing novels; elected himself a leading member of the Fabian Society; established a reputation, with his championship of Wagner, as a brilliant music critic; and composed his famous 'pleasant and unpleasant plays'. Vol. II is the story of Shaw in his prime and by 1914 the author of 'Pygmalion' has become the most popular writer in England. Vol. III brings the author's Olympian life of Bernard Shaw to a climax. The story opens with G.B.S. campaigning at the 1918 General Election and gradually reveals him as a conjuror, fabulist and seer. Here is Shaw in old age, a mysterious, comic, but above all moving portrait of one of the greatest men of letters of the 20th century. The reluctant recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature and a Hollywood Oscar, Shaw became an international icon. In the early 1930's he set off on a series of world pilgrimages. Shaw was to outlive almost all his contemporaries: Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Ellen Terry, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and most poignantly of all his wife Charlotte. But in vigorous old age he still had the power to attract new friends, both among the famous - Lady Astor, Lawrence of Arabia, Elgar - and the unusual including an enclosed nun, a heavyweight boxer and a wayward girl, forty years his junior. A most magnificent biography. PLEASE NOTE: A HEAVY SET THAT WILL REQUIRE ADDITIONAL SHIPPING COST 13. Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.