Publisher's Synopsis
Dedicated to Bernard F. Burgunder, eminent collector of Shaviana, SHAW 20 continues "Mr. B's" legacy by making available new bibliographic information on Shaw, his translations, and major research sources, along with two unpublished Shaw pieces. Representing a prodigious amount of research by a number of people, the volume provides extensive, previously unavailable information that is invaluable to the continuing study of Shaw and his works.
Featured is Dan H. Laurence's "A Supplement to Bernard Shaw: A Bibliography," the first update to be published since Laurence's original publication in 1983 (Soho Bibiographies). Extending his original publication, Laurence faithfully follows the format and style of the Soho edition, provides useful cross-references to the 1983 edition, and includes a selective index. "A Supplement. . ." makes as current as possible information relating to the publishing history of Shaw's works in English.
Also invaluable to scholarship, but not often seen in publication, is the series of investigatory reports, eleven in all, on the history and holdings of major Shaw research sources, written by equally major Shaw scholars, and spanning four nations: England, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. Prominent among the articles is an extensive report by James Tyler on the Burgunder Collection at Cornell University. Beyond these enticing collections is a listing of additional research sources at the end of the section.
Last but hardly least is the bibliography of Shaw's translations in ten major languages and an article on Shaw and his translators by Fred D. Crawford, completed by Dan H. Laurence. Culling the history of translations of Shaw's works in distant countries and in various languages, the bibliography gathers hitherto unavailable publication data, transliterated to English. Preceding the bibliography is a fascinating article on the interactions, intrigues, and inconsistencies that surrounded Shaw's relations with his translators. Given the multiple, complex issues involved, the article invites further research on Shaw's translations as much as it provides a basis for such scholarship.
Additionally, "Bernard Shaw's Further Letters to Siegfried Trebitsch," edited by Samuel A. Weiss, provides evidence, beyond Weiss's fine book-length edition, of the evolution of a relationship between Shaw and his German translator, particularly in the face of World War II enmities between their respective countries and Trebitsch's continued, if at times ill-managed, efforts to put Shaw on the German stage and in the German heart. In Shaw's "A Devil of a Fellow: Self-Criticism," originally published in a German translation by Trebitsch but published in this volume for the first time in its original English text, we hear Shaw "troubling" the Viennese about his introduction "as a dramatic poet to the German-speaking peoples." Shaw explains easily: "I never resist a man who is in earnest." The man was Siegfried Trebitsch.
Also included are corrections and additions to the Collected Letters 1926-1950 by Dan H. Laurence, a review of Leon Hugo's Edwardian Shaw, and John R. Pfeiffer's "Continuing Checklist of Shaviana."
