Shaw, George Bernard

Autograph manuscript of an untitled political article dealing with World War I, 2 pages (11 x 8 18 in.; 276 x 205 mm), n.p, n.d. [circa 1914];  in pencil on two sheets of light green paper (watermarked "T H Saunders 1913"), with several revisions. " ... Had England, instead of wavering between fear of Germany, patronage of France, and love of dividends, used her immense make-weight to consolidate France, Germany, England into a western nucleus ... we should not have been in our present mess; and we could have taken the criminal case of Servia [sic] out of the hands of the Austrian prosecutor into an international court ... even if the three great western powers must now fall on and hammer one another to exhaustion, they will still have to stop somewhere and mend their relations as best they can with a treaty ..."

Two odd pages from a typescript of his play The Millionairess (10 ½ x 8 ½ in.; 265 x 215 mm), n.p., n.d. [circa 1935], page 138 from Act I and page 162 from Act II, on light blue paper, with a holograph line of dialogue in black ink on each page by Shaw (the lines are the same) and with holograph directions in red ink by him for the insertion of the dialogue—in all about 70 words in his hand.

Autograph manuscript (30 lines in Shaw's shorthand in ink) and typescript (a section of 18 lines on green paper, with Shaw's holograph ink revisions, pasted between shorthand portions) of the article "Election Prospects," a total of 3 pages (9 5/8 x 7 6/8 in.; 242 x 200 mm), n.p., n.d. [1949]; each page on the verso of a printed sheet headed "Bernard Shaw's Play: Terms and Conditions for Public Performances," several rust marks, one small rust hole, a short tear repaired with tape; with a typed transcript (by Shaw's secretary Blanche Patch?), 3 pages, double-spaced, with several rust marks. This opinion piece is apparently the one published in the Daily Mail for 5 November 1949 as "Election Prospects as I See Them" (Laurence C3879). In it Shaw mentions Stalin and Churchill and sees Communism as a positive movement: "Mr. Churchill, who, to his great credit, was the first to recognize the eminence of Lenin, might well now warn our politicians of all parties, who seldom speak without naming Stalin, and never without insulting him, that Stalin is neither a would-be Napoleon nor a Hitleresque 'bloodthirsty guttersnipe,' but the mainstay of peace in Europe. None of your Statesmen seemed to have observed that ... civilization, from its beginning ... is founded on a broad basis of Communism ... They have not even read their Bibles (if they have any) far enough to know that Christianity began with a communism so stark that Saint Peter struck a man and his wife for holding back a few coins from the common stock for themselves ... " 

Four cyclostyled stencil reproductions of Shaw's costume sketches for the original production of Arms and the Man in 1894, 4 pages (each 10 ½ x 8 ½; 265 x 215 mm), uncolored, outlines and captions in blue; a small portion of each sheet with some tears and staining.  With a typed letter signed ("G.  B. S." in pencil), 1 page, including four lines in Shaw's penciled holograph, Cliveden, Taplow, 26 August 1941, to his secretary Blanche Patch: "If you are anywhere in the direction of Whitehall Court [his London home] look in and search the Arms & the Man compartment for a bundle of sketches for the costumes, two of which are the original colored drawings and the rest copied outlines. Two sets of these outlines will be enough to bring to Ayot with the colored ones. We shall have to color them for [Gabriel] Pascal [who was apparently considering a film of the play] ..."  See Laurence, Shaw: An Exhibit (Univ. of Texas. 1977), no. 212. 

One page (82) of printed proof of What I Really Wrote About the War, with three ink revisions in Shaw's hand totaling 16 words; with a marginal pencil notation in another  hand, dated 28 November 1937: "Alter this to suit the latest correction."