2018 Annual Newsletter International Shaw Society

Brush and ink caricature of G.B.S. by Irving Hoffman.

(Vassar College Archives)

Table of Contents

A Message from the ISS President

Shaw in the Theatre in 2018: A Sampler

Shaw Meetings and Conferences in 2018

Upcoming Events and Calls for Papers

Shaw Scholarship

Shaw Online

ISS Travel Grant Winners for 2018

Special Thanks from the ISS Treasurer

2018 ISS Newsletter Supplement END

A Message from the President of the ISS

Greetings from your soon-to-be-ex-POTISS! I very much look forward to all the free time I am about … to … yes, Dick? Oh, right. Never mind. Greetings from your soon-to-be-

Treasurer! The ISS has much to be proud of and thankful for as we close 2018. We had our very first, actual, election, and all the candidates were worthy and--unlike the American political landscape--very well behaved. I am pleased to hand over the reins to Bob Gaines and Jen Buckley, and I especially want to thank Ellen Dolgin for being the best Vice President I ever had. The ISS owes her a great debt, and I plan on making regular payments! We have much to look forward to next year, most especially a full and unabridged MAN AND SUPERMAN at the Shaw Festival. This is great news for most of you, but unfortunately, I am sure there will be others in my circumstance. The Summer Symposium will fall on the first day of classes for me at Ball State, and so I will eagerly look forward to everyone’s report! Thank you all for your continued good work as we all toil away in the Shavian fields, and I look forward to bountiful harvests next year!

Michael O’Hara

Associate Dean, College of Fine Arts Sursa Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts Ball State University

DON’T FORGET THERE IS MORE TO PERUSE IN THE NEWSLETTER “SUPPLEMENT” AND “GALLERY”, INCLUDING AN ISS RETROSPECTIVE AND PHOTOS FROM THE SUMMER SYMPOSIUM AND SHAWCHICAGO GALA.

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SHAW ON STAGE IN 2018: A SAMPLER

1) SHAW IN CHICAGO

The ShawChicago Theater Company celebrated its 24th season with productions of The Devil’s Disciple (14 October to 6 November 2017) and Margaret Raether’s adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves In Bloom (3 February to 26 February 2018), both directed by Artistic

Director Robert Scogin. Noël Coward’s Hay Fever (14 April to 7 May 2018) was the final show of the season, directed by Barbara Zahora. The 25th anniversary season features productions of Candida, Arms and the Man, and The Doctor’s Dilemma. See www.shawchicago.org/. Sadly, Bob Scogin passed away in October 2018.

2) SHAW IN NEW YORK

The Gingold Theatrical Group (GTG), headed by producer and director David Staller, continues to stage a concert reading of one Shaw play per month at Symphony Space (2537 Broadway at West 95th Street, New York City). The 2018 season, the GTG’s thirteenth, included a full production of Heartbreak House (28 August to 29 September 2018), readings of The Devil’s Disciple, Pygmalion, The Doctor’s Dilemma, Buoyant Billions, O’Flaherty V.C., and Back to Methuselah, and other Shaw-related events. The 2019 season includes productions of plays by Shaw (including Misalliance, Man and Superman, The Philanderer, and Arms and the Man) and by other writers (including Frederick Lonsdale, Githa Sowerby, and Ferenc Molnar). See www.projectshaw.com.

3) SHAW AT NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE

The 57th Annual Shaw Festival season, led by Artistic Director Tim Carroll, featured Shaw’s

How He Lied to Her Husband and The Man of Destiny (directed by Philip Akin) and O’Flaherty

V.C. (directed by Kimberley Rampersad). The roster of productions also included C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, adapted by Michael O’Brien and directed by Tim Carroll; Grand Hotel, book by Luther Davis with music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest and directed by Eda Holmes; Stephen Fry’s Mythos: A Trilogy, directed by Tim Carroll; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, adapted by R. Hamilton Wright and David Pichette and directed by Craig Hall; Sarah Ruhl’s Stage Kiss, directed by Anita Rochon; Oh! What A Lovely War written by Joan Littlewood, Theatre Workshop, and Charles Chilton and directed by Peter Hinton; Sarena Parmar’s The Orchard (After Chekhov), directed by Ravi Jain; Michael Mackenzie’s The Baroness and the Pig, directed by Selma Dimitrijevic; and William

Shakespeare’s Henry V, directed by Tim Carroll and Kevin Bennett. For further information about the Festival’s 2019 season, including productions of Man and Superman and Getting Married, write to Shaw Festival, Post Office Box 774, Niagara-on-the- Lake, Ontario, Canada, L0S 1J0; or call 1-800-511-SHAW [7429] or 905-468-2153; or go to www.shawfest.com.

Time to Renew Your ISS Membership for 2019

https://shawsociety.org/2019membership.htm

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4) SHAW AT AYOT ST LAWRENCE

For information about summer performances of Shaw plays at Shaw’s Corner, Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, by Michael Friend Productions, contact Sue Morgan at Sue.Morgan@nationaltrust.org.uk. The plays staged in 2018, its 27th season, were Widowers’ Houses (22 to 24 June) and Fanny’s First Play (20 to 22 July). Michael also took Widowers’ Houses to the Sarah Thorne Theatre, Broadstairs (26 to 29 July). For a lovely photographic record of many of these performances, go to www.mfp.org.uk/Personal/Albumpersonal.htm.

For a delightful account of these productions, see R. F. Dietrich’s illustrated article “‘Shaw’s Corner’ as a Theater” in SHAW 31 (2011): 234-52, which in an Appendix includes a chronology of Shaw’s Corner productions from 1960 to 2018. Go to https://shawsociety.org/Shaw's- Corner-Theater.htm to see a version that has the photos in color and that provides an updated Appendix on the listing of productions of Shaw’s plays at Shaw’s Corner.

5) SHAW IN LONDON

The Shaw Society (UK) was founded in 1941 and its members meet monthly in the John Thaw Room at The Actors Centre, London, for talks, lectures, and play readings. In honor of their 75th Anniversary, The Shaw Society is uploading resources for use by anyone interested in aspects of GBS. Over the last two years, they have collected various interviews which they hope will be enlightening, enjoyable, and useful, especially in pedagogical contexts. The first resources posted are Shavian Conversations with Professor Stanley Weintraub and Barbara Smoker. Also

included is a film production of one of the 2016 TF Evans award-winning playscripts.” This can

be viewed at https://shaw-institute.com/ but also has can be accessed via the Shaw Archive at

https://sites.google.com/view/shawarchive/home.

On 21 January 2018 at the Tristan Bates Theatre in London’s west end, the Society presented

Mrs. Shaw Herself followed by a Q & A hosted by Anne Wright.

For more information and a sample issue of the Society’s publication The Shavian, see

www.shawsociety.org.uk/. You can also follow them on Twitter @ShawSoc. Thornwick Press also

published Barbara Smoker’s autobiography My Godforsaken Life: Memoir of a Maverick in October.

6) SHAW IN JAPAN

The spring meeting of the Bernard Shaw Society of Japan was held at Sugamo Satellite, Jumonji University, Tokyo, on 9 June 2018. In the afternoon, three talks were delivered. Nicholas R. Williams, in his presentation on The Millionairess, argued that “the very clever Epifania stands for the chaos that the modern obsession with money can cause” yet Shaw’s “pantomime-like story” ultimately illustrates that “money is in itself not wrong if it is used for the common good.”

In the second, Minoru Morioka took a Jungian approach to Androcles and the Lion, analyzing the play through the lens of “Individuation Theory”. The final speaker was Hisashi Morikawa who discussed “Shaw’s ambivalent attitudes towards his native country, from his youthful dismissive descriptions of Ireland in Immaturity through Napoleon’s view of an ideal union of Irish head and English vitality in The Man of Destiny and Larry Doyle’s wish to live in a country “where the facts were not brutal and the dreams not unreal” in John Bull’s Other Island” to the representation of Ireland in O’Flaherty V. C. and Back to Methuselah.

The autumn meeting of the BSSJ was held on November 24th at the Tenpaku Campus of Meijo University in Nagoya. Papers presented included “Medical Ethics in The Doctor’s Dilemma” by Miki Matsumoto; “How I translated Captain Brassbound’s Conversion into Japanese” by Tatsuo Ohtsuka; and “’Ideal’ and ‘the Real’ in Arms and the Man: Through Jungian ‘Individuation’” by Minoru Morioka.

7) SHAW IN NEW MEXICO

Matthew Yde was commissioned to adapt Mrs. Warren's Profession by Aux Dog Theatre of Nob Hill in Albuquerque, NM. Directed by Matthew, the production ran from February 2 to February 25, 2018. Below is his director’s note from the house program:

Director's Note

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good [people] do nothing.”

Bernard Shaw wrote Mrs. Warren’s Profession (his third play) in 1893 hoping for a private performance at J.T. Grein’s Independent Theatre Society in London, a private performance venue. Grein sought controversial, cutting-edge dramas that would otherwise go unproduced due to the censorship laws, strictly enforced by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. As it turned out, Mrs. Warren’s Profession proved too controversial even for Grein. It was published in 1898 in a volume titled Plays Unpleasant (along with Shaw’s first two plays, Widowers’ Houses and The Philanderer), but did not receive an unexpurgated licensed performance in Britain for another thirty years. Now the play is a classic, but it no longer inspires any sense of shock. It’s a “problem play” without much of a problem. In fact, it’s hard to believe that when the play was performed in New York in 1905 the entire cast was arrested after the show.

When we decided to produce Mrs. Warren’s Profession we thought it best to adapt it to our current society and, if possible, capture some of that original sense of shock. We wanted it to be a play that once again addressed issues of vital importance to the health and wellbeing of our society, but which unfortunately most people are too uncomfortable to discuss. I spent almost a year researching human trafficking and institutional pedophilia, and what I discovered blew my mind. I found that most child victims of sexual abuse develop Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and are susceptible to mind control. In fact, DID (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) is of two kinds: Reactive DID and Structured DID. The latter is the deliberate creation of DID in a victim for the purposes of hypnotic programming, or mind control. This is a social disease almost completely without discussion in contemporary society. Bearing this in mind you will understand why my preferred title for the play is MINDRAPE: Mrs. Warren’s Profession 2.0.

I also learned that human trafficking is the most lucrative black market industry, surpassing even illegal drugs. While we were all discussing Robert E. Lee’s statue, living breathing human beings—mostly women and children—were being bought and sold. If we are successful, Mrs.

Warren’s Profession is once again a problem play that inspires moral outrage. We invite you to learn more and speak out.

8) SHAW AROUND THE GLOBE

As there were countless other productions of Shaw’s plays around the world, we regret that we haven’t space to mention them all. However, you can get notices of them by subscribing to Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts.

For links to some of the Shaw plays performed in the USA, Canada and the UK, go to http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca and look (to the far right) at the column headed International Shaw Calendar. A click on any play title will link you to a website giving production details. For past performances of Shaw plays, go to http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/the-shaw-project-3/past-and- present-performances/shaw-calendar-archives/. For reviews of past performances of Shaw plays at the Shaw Festival, go to http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/learn-about-our-partners-2/shaw- festival/shaw-festival-productions-reviews/

These invaluable resources are updated regularly by Kay Li (York University, Toronto, Canada), who deserves our collective Shavian applause for her ongoing work on behalf of GBS!

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SHAW MEETINGS AND CONFERENCES IN 2018

1) THE 42nd ANNUAL COMPARATIVE DRAMA CONFERENCE The Shaw sessions at the 42nd annual Comparative Drama Conference (5 to 7 April 2018) at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, were chaired by Tony J. Stafford (University of Texas, El Paso) and included the following presentations: “Shaw’s Interior Authors in the Fight Against Censorship” (Lagretta Lenker, University of South Florida), “Village Wooing: Shavian Metatheater from A to Z” (Jean Reynolds, Polk State College), “Artificial Politics in the ‘Natural’ Marketplace: The Partnership of Altruism and Capitalism in Shaw’s Plays Major Barbara and The Millionairess” (Christa Zorn, Indiana University Southeast), “Lives of the Saints: Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan and Calderón de la Barca’s The Constant Prince” (Oscar Giner, Arizona State University), “Cardplayers and Clergymen: Bernard Shaw, Henry Arthur Jones, and the Theater of the 1890s” (Mary Christian, Middle Georgia State University), and “Shaw’s Drama of Ideas” (Satyarth Prakash Tripathi, Amity University. Abstracts for these papers can be accessed at http://blogs.rollins.edu/drama/2018-program/.

2) The 14th annual Summer Shaw Symposium was held at Niagara-on-the-Lake (27-29 July 2018), co-sponsored by The Shaw Festival and the International Shaw Society. The keynote was delivered by Kimberley Rampersad, director of this season’s production of O’Flaherty V.C.. Activities included three Shaw Festival theatrical performances (How He Lied to Her Husband, The Man of Destiny, and O’Flaherty V.C.), a discussion with cast members, five sessions of panel presentations, an acting workshop with a member of the company, a lunchtime elocution performance, and a performance event entitled “Shaw on Shakespeare” directed by John McInerney.

3) The Shaw session at the 2018 Modern Language Association convention (4 to 7 January) in New York City was entitled “Revolutionary States: Bernard Shaw, 1918” and chaired by Jennifer Buckley. Four papers were presented at the panel: “Staging Immortality in 1918:

Bernard Shaw and Luigi Antonelli” (James Armstrong, CUNY); “Revolutionaries of a Different Sort: Bernard Shaw and Emma Goldman” (Virginia Costello, University of Illinois-Chicago); “War Damage: Postwar Reflections in Bernard Shaw and Seán O’Casey” (Martin Meisel, Columbia University); and “Women’s Self-Determination in Drama at WWI’s end: Shaw’s [Empress] Annajanska and J.M. Barrie’s The Old Lady Shows Her Medals” (Ellen Dolgin, Dominican College). Abstracts for this and previous MLA Shaw panels can be accessed at: https://shawsessions.mla.hcommons.org/.

Ellen Dolgin, Martin Meisel, Virginia Costello, James Armstrong, Jennifer Buckley

4) A mini-symposium entitled "Bernard Shaw and Irish Conventions” was held on the afternoon of 27 Feb. 2018 at Limerick's Mary Immaculate College, featuring a keynote address by Nelson O'Ceallaigh Ritschel (Massachusetts Maritime Academy) on "Bernard Shaw, Seán O'Casey, and the Perceptions of James Connolly."

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UPCOMING EVENTS & CALLS FOR PAPERS

1) THE 41st ANNUAL COMPARATIVE DRAMA CONFERENCE will be held at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, from 4 to 6 April 2019. Please go to http://comparativedramaconference.org/ for details.

2) The 16th Annual Shaw Symposium, co-sponsored by the ISS and The Shaw Festival, will take place from 15 to 17 August 2019 at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. All information for submitting paper proposals and applications for Bryden Scholarships and ISS Travel Grants can be accessed at https://shawsociety.org/ SummerSymposium-2019.htm. While papers on anything and everything Shaw are always welcome, talks that focus on the Shaw plays the Festival is producing this year (Getting Married and Man and Superman) are especially desirable. Please send a 300-500 word abstract, and, if you are not known to the committee, a brief letter of introduction and CV to Professor Jennifer Buckley at jbuckley@shawsociety.org. For information on ISS Travel Grants and Bryden Scholarships, go to https://shawsociety.org/Grants-Scholarships-2019.htm. For all the details on the Summer Shaw Symposium, go to https://shawsociety.org/SummerSymposium- 2019.htm. TOP

Time to Renew Your ISS Membership for 2019:

https://shawsociety.org/2019membership.htm

SHAW SCHOLARSHIP: BOOKS ABOUT SHAW

This year has seen much activity in Palgrave Macmillan’s series, “Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries,” edited by Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel and Peter Gahan. 2018 volumes include Joan Templeton’s Shaw’s Ibsen: A Reappraisal, Eglantina Remport's Lady Gregory and Irish National Theatre, Christopher Wixson’s Bernard Shaw and Modern Advertising: Prophet Motives, and Stephen Watt’s Bernard Shaw’s Fiction, Material Psychology, and Affect: Shaw, Freud, Simmel. The books in the Palgrave Macmillan series strive to present the best and most current research on Shaw and his theatre and literary contemporaries and to further our understanding of Shaw and those who worked with him or in reaction against him. Queries and manuscripts may be sent to Nelson Ritschel (nocrsc@aol.com), Peter Gahan (pgahan@me.com), and/or Tomas René (T.Rene@Palgrave.com).

The series can be accessed at: https://www.palgrave.com/us/series/14785

Remember as well that ISS members receive a 20% discount on the Shaw series titles; the discount code is ISSBC and can be entered at the checkout stage in the ‘basket’ when ordering.

Please note too that there are books on Shaw available for purchase in the University Press of Florida’s Shaw Series, edited for nearly two decades by the indomitable R. F. Dietrich:

Shaw, Plato, and Euripides Sidney P. Albert

Shaw’s Controversial Socialism James Alexander

Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion Stuart E. Baker

Shaw and Joyce Martha Fodaski Black

Bernard Shaw as Artist-Fabian Charles A. Carpenter

Bernard Shaw’s Novels R.F. Dietrich

Shaw’s Theater Bernard F. Dukore

Shaw Shadows: Rereading the Texts of Bernard Shaw Peter Gahan

Bernard Shaw: A Life A.M. Gibbs

Shaw and Feminisms: On Stage and Off D.A. Hadfield and Jean Reynolds, eds.

Bernard Shaw’s “The Black Girl in Search of God” Leon Hugo

Bernard Shaw and China: Cross-Cultural Encounters Kay Li

Bernard Shaw and the French Michel W. Pharand

Pygmalion’s Wordplay Jean Reynolds

Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel

Shaw’s Settings: Gardens and Libraries Tony Jason Stafford

Who’s Afraid of Bernard Shaw Stanley Weintraub

What Shaw Really Wrote About the War J.L. Wisenthal and Daniel O’Leary, eds.

All titles can be accessed via http://www.upf.com.

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WORKS BY SHAW

Contracted to appear in 2021 will be eight volumes in the Shaw series, overseen by Brad Kent, for Oxford World's Classics:

Mrs Warren’s Profession, Candida, You Never Can Tell, ed. Sos Eltis

Arms and the Man, The Devil’s Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra, ed. Lawrence Switzky Man and Superman, John Bull’s Other Island, Major Barbara, ed. Declan Kiberd Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Saint Joan, ed. Brad Kent

The Apple Cart, On the Rocks, Too True to Be Good, The Millionairess, ed. Matthew Yde

Playlets (Shorter Plays), ed. James Moran

Major Cultural Essays, ed. David Kornhaber

Major Political Writings, ed. Elizabeth Carolyn Miller

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SHAW: THE JOURNAL OF BERNARD SHAW STUDIES

SHAW 38.1 (June 2018) was a theme issue that focused upon “Shaw in Performance,” with as guest editors.

SHAW 38.2 (December 2018) was a general issue featuring articles/book reviews.

**Coming soon is SHAW 39.1 (June 2019) on the theme of “Shaw and Music”, edited by Brigitte Bogar and Ellen Dolgin ”**

Request for Manuscripts: Future SHAW Theme Issues

SHAW 40.1 (to be published in June 2020) will focus on “Shaw and New Media” and be edited by Jennifer Buckley (University of Iowa). The issue will explore and assess Shaw’s engagements with nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century media and challenges the popular equation of “new media” with the digital by adopting the historically contingent definition of the term proposed by media scholars, notably Lisa Gitelman (1999, 2006) and Gitelman and Geoffrey B. Pingree (2003). This focus is prompted not only by Shaw’s various engagements with a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century media — including the telegraph, telephone, photograph, gramophone, typewriter, film, radio, television, and mass print

— but also by media historians’ and theorists’ sometimes brief but always provocative engagements with Shaw. Inquiries about SHAW 40.1 should be sent to jennifer- buckley@uiowa.edu, or mailed to Jennifer Buckley, 310 English-Philosophy Building, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA, 52245.

SHAW 41.1 (to be published in June 2021) is entitled “Bernard Shaw, Journalist” and will be guest-edited by Peter Gahan and Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel. Its cfp is as follows:

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SHAW 41.1: BERNARD SHAW, JOURNALIST

“Journalism can claim to be the highest form of literature; for all the highest literature is journalism…. I also am a journalist, proud of it, deliberately cutting out of my works all that is

not journalism, convinced that nothing that is not journalism will live long as literature.”

---Bernard Shaw, The Sanity of Art (1908)

Bernard Shaw was possibly the most famous journalist in the world in his own time as well as its highest paid. His writing career began (1875) and ended (1950) with journalism, with his music and drama criticism as well as his contentious political commentary unparalleled among contemporaries. He wrote on every conceivable topic for print outlets of every possible variety: daily newspapers, weekly periodicals, special supplements, small journals, and organization newsletters. His journalism was pervasive throughout the English-speaking world, Britain and its Empire, Ireland, and America, while his network of translators made it available throughout Europe and even Latin America. But although he proclaimed journalism the highest form of literature, his satirical portraits of journalists and critics in such plays as The Philanderer, The Doctor’s Dilemma, and Fanny’s First Play illustrate the depths to which journalism can descend, with many points in between.

His coming of age as a journalist coincided with the heyday of the New Journalism (1880s variety), and he wrote for its best-known editors, W.T. Stead, T.P. O’Connor, and H.W. Massingham. Yet a tension between Shaw and New Journalism mirrored the tension within New Journalism itself between sensationalism and exposure of the truth. A similar tension can also be found between Shaw’s socialist articles and the major Liberal papers he sometimes wrote for, even though happy to use them for his own purposes. And while he tended to avoid major non- socialist Conservative outlets, their letters pages (The Times especially) and sometimes their soliciting for material (e.g. Irish articles for the Daily Express and Fabian lectures for Hearst’s American papers) would often prove irresistible. At the opposite end of the spectrum, he provided a stream of copy for small specialist journals and newsletters that mirrored his own interests, whether about trade unionism, photography, printing, vegetarianism, etc.. Even beyond his own journalism, he provided funding for such influential twentieth century periodicals as The New Age, the New Statesman, and the Irish Statesman, despite not always seeing eye-to-eye with their editorial policy.

Even a selected list of print outlets for Shaw's journalism is impressively extensive:

Daily Newspapers: The Star, The Times, Manchester Guardian, Daily Chronicle, North London Press (Shaw acting editor when Ernest Parkes was imprisoned), Daily

Citizen, Daily Herald, Daily Worker, Morning Post, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch, Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, Daily News and Leader (including Daily News), Morning Post, Evening Standard, The Observer, News Chronicle, New York American, New York Times, New York Evening Journal, Evening Sun, Pittsburgh Gazette, Bulletin (San Francisco), The Burra Record (Australia), etc.

Weeklies/Periodicals: Pall Mall Gazette, Fortnightly Review, Saturday Review, The World, Truth, Liberty, Tribune, Illustrated London News, Westminster Gazette, Candid Friend, New Age, The Nation, New Statesman, New York [Journal-]American, T. P.’s Weekly, The Era, The Observer, Sunday Dispatch, Sunday Chronicle, Sunday Express, Time and Tide, Forward

Irish Papers: Freeman's Journal, The Evening Telegraph, Irish Times, Irish Independent, Irish Press, Seanachie, The Irish Worker, The Worker's Republic, The Worker, Irish Citizen, Irish Homestead, Irish Statesman, The Bell.

Specialist journals: socialist (To-day, Our Corner, Commonweal, Truth, Labour Leader, The Clarion, Labour Monthly, New Commonwealth, etc.), Fabian (Fabian News, Fabian Quarterly), Savoy, religious (Church Reformer, Christian Commonwealth, Christian Globe, Freethinker), women’s suffrage (Englishwoman) printing (Caxton Magazine, The Graphic), writing (The Author, Times Literary Supplement, The Bookman), stage, autos (The Car), photos, anti-vivisection, etc.

For this issue of SHAW, the editors seek any proposal that covers Shaw and journalism, although essays on the following topics would be especially welcome:

The Novice Journalist-Novelist, 1876-1887: editorial, socialism, novels, reviewer (music, books, & art).

The Liberals’ Antagonist: New Journalism in The Star and after, 1888-1925 (H.W. Massingham, Ernest Parke at The Star, Daily Chronicle, & The Nation).

The Print Start-up Investor: l’humanité nouvelle, The New Age, The New Statesman, The Irish Statesman.

Stirring the Pot with Letters to the Editors (either arts or politics).

The Absent Participant in Irish Journalism W.B. Yeats, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, James Larkin, James Connolly, James, Stephens, Thomas McDonagh, Horace Plunkett, Æ (George Russell), Sean O’Faolain.

The New Journalist in the New World From Benjamin Tucker's Liberty to William Randolph Hearst’s New York American.

The Autonomous Interviewer: Shaw meets G.B.S.

The Arts’ Critic's Art, 1889-98: music/drama criticism in The Star, The World,

& Saturday Review.

Global Commentator in the Age of Syndication: Politics at home and abroad between the wars.

Campaigns & Controversies

Editors/Proprietors: Annie Besant, William Morris, W. T. Stead, T. P. O'Connor, H. W. Massingham, Edmund Yates, Frank Harris, Benjamin Tucker, Ernest Parke, Robert Blatchford, Alfred Orage, Clifford Sharp, R.D. Blumenfeld, Northcliffe,

C.P. Scott,Hearst,, Lady Rhonda, Maynard Keynes.

Antagonists: Marxists (from Hyndman to Laski) and Liberals (John Morley, G.K. Chesterton & Hilaire Belloc, Leonard Hobhouse, Edward Grey, George Orwell).

Critic Colleagues: Belfort Bax, William Archer, A.B. Walkley, Max Beerbohm, Roger Fry, Ernest Newman, Arnold Bennet, T. S. Eliot.

***Inquiries and proposals for SHAW 41.1 should be directed to: nocrsc@aol.com and pgahan@me.com.

Request for Manuscripts: Future SHAW General Issues

SHAW 39.2 (to be published in December 2019) and SHAW 40.2 (to be published in December 2020) will include articles on general topics, as well as book reviews, the Checklist of Shaviana, Notices, and ISS information. Prospective essays for SHAW should be submitted directly to http://www.psupress.org/journals/jnls_shaw.html. Please include an abstract and, for

matters of style, refer to recent SHAW volumes. For all other information about SHAW or to suggest other issue themes, contact Christopher Wixson at cmwixson@eiu.edu. TOP

SHAW ONLINE

Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín’s GBS channel on YouTube continuous its salubrious growth; you can access various Shaw-related videos at www.youtube.com/channel/UCxGpZjHhix37VN-

zFfX6psg/playlists.

1) SHAW BEHIND THE CAMERA

A few years ago, the London School of Economics digitized its collection of some 20,000 photographs and negatives taken by Shaw, an inveterate photographer. To explore this amazing visual resource, go to http://archives.lse.ac.uk/Advanced.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog. In the field marked “Ref No” type in “Shaw Photographs*” (don’t forget the asterisk); then click “Search.” This will give you access to over 15,000 photographs, which you can view by clicking on the links. To read what Shaw himself has to say about one of his favorite pastimes, a good place to begin is Bernard Shaw on Photography: Essays and Photographs (1989), edited by Bill Jay and Margaret Moore.

2) SHAW REFERENCE WORKS

A Chronology of Works By and About Bernard Shaw is regularly updated and can be accessed at

https://shawsociety.org/Chronology-of-Works.htm.

Charles Carpenter’s A Descriptive Chronology of His Plays, Theatrical Career, and Dramatic Theories can be found at: https://shawsociety.org/ShawChron.htm.

A.M. Gibbs’s Chronology of Shaw’s Life can be reached at https://shawsociety.org/Shaw- Chronology.htm.

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3) SHAW’S WORKS

Since 2014, Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín (Universidad de Extremadura, Spain) has

been collaborating with a computer programmer to develop an interface that will enable anyone to search Gustavo’s database without infringing on copyright restrictions (as most of Shaw’s works will not go out of copyright until 2020). To learn more about (and see samples of) this ground-breaking enterprise, go to http://shawquotations.blogspot.com.es/2014/09/digitizing- shaw-shaw-quotation-database.html and www.shawsociety.org/SEARCH.htm.

Scholars are welcome to submit concordance queries for Shaw's plays and novels—as well as any/all of the books in this Table of Contents (https://goo.gl/YvoTq7). Results will be retrieved as an Excel table.

4) SHAW UPDATES

As part of his duties as editor of the “Continuing Checklist of Shaviana” for SHAW, the ambitious and hard-working Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín regularly mines online repositories in search of the latest pieces of Shaw scholarship. Some of these have been sent to ISS members in regular updates, including previews of items to be listed in the annual bibliography and myriad online occurrences of Shaw and Shaw-related events and references.

Gustavo has now created a SHAW ARCHIVE, which allows you to go back over all of his GEN contributions to Shaw scholarship and also to have access to:

GeoShaw - An interactive map of the key places in Shaw's life.

George Bernard Shaw (GBS) Youtube Channel.

Shaw Quotations Page - Where you'll find the source of your favorite Shaw quotations.

This is a fantastic collection that deserves both awe and applause. Please put https://sites.google.com/view/shawarchive/home among your Favorites or create a shortcut to it on your desktop.

5) SHAW AT AYOT ST LAWRENCE

Produced by Martin Wright, a visual tour of Shaw’s Corner, Ayot St Lawrence, is available at www.gamelabuk.com/shaws/. Click play to hear Stanley Weintraub, the doyen of Shaw studies, comment at various stops along the way. Our thanks to Stan and Rodelle Weintraub for providing this vivid and unique glimpse into Shaw’s Hertfordshire home!

6) SHAW AND HIS WORKS ON FILM

In 2016, Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín launched a Shaw Youtube Channel (www.youtube.com/channel/UCxGpZjHhix37VN-zFfX6psg/playlists). “A compendium of the best videos of and about Bernard Shaw and his milieu” is divided into the following playlists: GBS in Performance, GBS Footage, Lectures and Talks, Shaw in Film, Historical Context, Documentaries, and Miscellany. The GBS Channel brings together the multitude of videos: documentaries about Shaw, film footage of Shaw himself, film versions of his plays, and much

more. Users are encouraged to suggest/submit videos that may fit any of the playlists.

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7) SHAW’S GEOGRAPHIES

Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín, with the assistance of former ISS membership secretary Ann Stewart, and Evelyn Ellis of the Shaw Society (UK), has created the GeoShaw map (https://shawsociety.org/GeoShawIntro.htm), a collaborative project that attempts to provide a geographical account of Shaw’s life via map markers of his travels, domiciles, meeting halls, and favorite vegetarian restaurants, to mention only a few examples of what’s available.

Evelyn’s photographs of “Shaw’s Places Then and Now” can be seen at www.shawquotations.blogspot.com.es/2015/10/geoshaw-shaws-places-then-and-now.html.

8) SHAW DIGTIZED

The Sagittarius-ORION Literature Digitizing Project at http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca is constantly expanding its open access section to make it a useful tool for Shaw scholars and fans. This include Reviews of Productions of Shaw’s Plays Around the World: 2015-2017: http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/shaw-reviews-for-season-2015-2016/, 2014-2015: http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/the-shaw-project-3/shaw-reviews-for-season-2014/, before 2014 at http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/learn-about-our-partners-2/shaw-festival/shaw-festival-productions- reviews/. In addition, there is the Shaw Bookshelf featuring especially new Shaw books at http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/the-shaw-project-3/shaw-bookshelf/. Educators may find the Education Programs in Theatres Around the World useful: http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/canadian- theatre-companies/.

A key attraction is the Virtual Tour of Shaviana at http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/virtual-tour-of- shaviana/. Notable displays also include: 1) “Who is Bernard Shaw” written by Stanley and Rodelle Weintraub; 2) a calendar of productions of Shaw’s plays around the world; 3) theatre productions with links to reviews and videos of performances around the world; 4) Footsteps of Bernard Shaw, with videos showing Shaw’s world tour; 5) links to Al Carpenter’s Shaw Bibliography; 6) virtual tours of the late Isidor Saslav’s amazing Shaw collections; 7) links to updated Shaw holiday shopping; 8) links to numerous electronic Shaw texts; and 9) other classroom resources on specific plays. The restricted access platform continues to feature

classroom resources, such as annotated full texts, study guides, reference materials written by Shaw scholars, an annotated bibliography, and concordances and a search engine.

ISS TRAVEL GRANT WINNERS FOR 2018

In the photo above, ISS President Michael O’Hara stands with the two overjoyed recipients of ISS travel grants to the Shaw Symposium (27 to 29 July 2018) at the Shaw Festival in Niagara- on-the-Lake, Ontario: (L to R) Isabel Stowell-Kaplan (University of Toronto) and Yulia Skalnaya (Lomonosov Moscow State University).

TIME TO RENEW YOUR ANNUAL ISS MEMBERSHIP FOR 2019!!

https://shawsociety.org/2019membership.htm

It has long been the custom in the theater to refer to people who contribute to the enterprise beyond the going price as “angels.” While it may be true, as John Tanner says, that “In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular” (Maxims for Revolutionists: Greatness), we are clearly still on a planet where “angelic behavior” of this sort deserves notice. Yes, we appreciate that everyone contributes what they can afford, and we are thankful to everyone who pays the annual membership fee and/or orders journals, but “Shaw Bizness” needs the exceptional contribution as well as the standard in order to pursue its goals of encouraging the young with travel grants and of making Shaw’s works and the study of Shaw available to as many as possible. So here we wish to pay special notice to those who have made it possible for the ISS to “go beyond.”

The list, year by year, of those whose “angelic” contribution to the ISS has gotten them written in the ISS Book of the Life Force by the Recording Shaw (with horns holding up his halo) can be viewed at www.shawsociety.org/ISS-Angels.htm.

Facebook & Twitter: Follow the ISS on Twitter and receive ISS updates on Facebook (click “Like” on the International Shaw Society page; the more “Likes,” the more notice everywhere). For assistance, write to Jean Reynolds at ballroom16@aol.com.

Google Alerts: To sign up for your own Google Alerts on Shaw, go to www.google.com/alerts.

ISS Homepage: There are countless pages about Shaw’s life and works on, or linked from www.shawsociety.org, and many of them are continuously updated by ISS Webmaster R.F. Dietrich. TOP

SPECIAL THANKS FROM ISS TREASURER R.F. DIETRICH

Look, I became an English Major to avoid becoming an accountant, as my father was forced to be as a grocery store manager. I succeeded in avoiding that fate for the 50 years I took and taught English courses. And then, on the brink of retirement as an English Prof, I joined Leonard Conolly in leading the founding of the ISS, and I surprisingly became an accountant (a Treasurer, we call it) for the next fifteen years, as the necessary consequence of being the Founding President and Founding Webmaster who were in need of an accountant. There was money involved, more and more of it as the years went on, and somebody had to keep track of the ebb and flow. Don’t get me wrong, I like numbers, and playing with them, especially seeing the ISS prosper in that way, but accountancy is about columns of numbers, with adding and subtracting and, worst of all, balancing of accounts, which involves agreeing with bank statements, however many hours and sometimes days it takes. The part I’m most ambivalent about is the “Membership Drive” launched every January that is the curse of the ISS Treasurer, for I hate intruding in the lives of ISS members in that way. Your money or your membership! But the really good side of that is that I got to know so many of you individually, emailing as friends, eventually, and talking face to face at meetings, and I doubt that there’s anybody in the ISS who knows more of our members individually and where you’re all “coming from.” And that’s the part I give thanks for and will miss the most as I pass the baton to Michael O’Hara, may he and the ISS thrive. I’m going back to reading and writing books now instead of numbers on a computer screen, but I’ll be home at the same email address welcoming a chat about something other than money.

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2018 Director of Publications and Newsletter Editor: Christopher Wixson

**Thanks to Brigitte Bogar, Toni Burke, Tracy Collins, Tony Courier, Ellen Dolgin, Bob Gaines, Kay LI, Michael O’Hara, Yulia Skalnaya, and David Staller for generously sharing from their photo cloud vaults**

Newsletters from previous years can be accessed at: https://shawsociety.org/ISS- Newsletters.htm.

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Continue to the 2018 ISS Newsletter Supplement:

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2018 ISS Newsletter Supplement

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ShawChicago “Bernies” (2 June 2018)

At its annual gala benefit (2 June 2018), ShawChicago presented two coveted “Bernie” Awards, one to the International Shaw Society and one to Richard Farr Dietrich for his dedicated leadership in various ISS positions.

Richard Dietrich accepts the Bernie

The late Bob Scogin presenting the ISS Bernie (above); Michael O’Hara accepting (below)

Richard Dietrich wishing he had horns like Pshaw

The festive occasion prompted Dick Dietrich to pen an informal origin story for the Society:

THE FOUNDING OF THE INTERNATIONAL SHAW SOCIETY

by R. F. Dietrich

On June 2, 2018, at the annual GALA of the ShawChicago Theater Company, I was given a “Bernie” (a statue of Shaw a la the Oscar) for the founding of the ISS. As central as I may have been to that founding, and the principal organizer and planner for it ever since, the story of the steps that led to it and from it will show that many others were involved as well.

A Shaw Conference arranged by Leonard Conolly in 1989 at the University of Guelph in Canada, which displayed the magnificent Shaw collection of Dan H. Laurence, introduced me to the world of the Shaw scholar, and my meeting Leonard there was later to develop into a crucial, co-operative relationship in founding the ISS, so much so that I think Leonard is due a “Bernie” as well.

My personal awakening to the need for the ISS, or some similar organization, occurred at a Shaw Conference in 1993 organized by Professor Bernard Dukore at Virginia Tech University. All of the major scholars in the field were there, and specifically it was Dan H. Laurence’s deliverance of certain “bad news” about declining interest in Shaw as evidenced by his disappearance from textbooks and book stores, with the paperback Penguins being the only texts still available for purchase, that woke me up. In the 1960s and 70s, I had co-authored a few textbooks in the field of drama during a period when it was assumed that an “Introduction to Drama” textbook would contain at least one Shaw play. By the 1990s, that was increasingly not true. Following from the justifiable logic of expanding the canon of mostly white male playwrights to include playwrights not white and male, Shaw plays were

getting bumped out of some major textbooks and thus Shaw in general was being taught in fewer classes. We are now at the point when Shaw is sometimes not mentioned at all at the huge annual conventions sponsored by the Modern Language Association, and even when a “special session” on Shaw is accepted by MLA planners, such sessions are assigned at the least optimum of times and sparsely attended. Shaw has done better at the annual Comparative Drama conferences, and recently at Irish Studies conferences, but usually still drawing small audiences, especially among the young. While Shaw’s plays have maintained a certain continuing presence in the global theater, perhaps second only to Shakespeare in year to year productions over the last 70 years, it is now difficult to find anyone in many major universities who can or is willing to direct a thesis or dissertation on Shaw, which is echoed by his general absence from graduate classrooms and fewer graduate students being inclined to write on Shaw.

What followed was the third of three attempts to address these problems at independently-arranged Shaw conferences, this one at Marquette University in 2001 arranged by Professor Michael Patrick Gillespie and Monty Davis, the Artistic Director of the Milwaukee Chamber Theater, whose full-scale production of Back to Methuselah was the main draw for a small crowd of Shaw scholars. Partly inspired by these independent attempts to revive interest in Shaw, it was at the Marquette conference that on a panel assigned to discuss the problem I proposed founding “The International Shaw Society” as a not-for-profit corporation, that being the first explicit mention of the ISS.

Present at the Marquette conference were Leonard Conolly and Michael O’Hara, who eventually succeeded me, in turn, as President of the ISS. Leonard Conolly, a Canadian scholar who lived within driving

distance of The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario and a frequent attender at Shaw plays there, had a contact at the Festival named Denis Johnston, Co-Director of the Academy of the Shaw Festival and Audience Outreach Director, who found space at the Festival for a small group of Shavians to discuss proceeding with the idea of founding the ISS. Leonard and I collaborated in inviting via email as many Shaw scholars as we could reach to discuss and vote on the founding of the ISS. We met in the summers of 2002 and 2003 at the Shaw Festival for what were called “Summits” (chaired by me) to discuss how we wanted to proceed, those at the second meeting voting to elect me as the Acting President of the ISS, who was specifically charged with establishing the ISS with the Federal Government of the USA and the State of Florida (where I lived) as a 501(c)(3) not-for profit corporation.

When the ISS was legally established in February of 2004, my wife Lori and I had already arranged for the first ISS Conference to be held on the Sarasota campus (on the Ringling estate) of the University of South Florida (main campus in Tampa), where I was a professor in the English Department and Lori was the Executive Secretary in the USF President’s office. The Sarasota conference, with the keynote address by Eric Bentley, was the first to have such a large turnout of Shaw scholars and enthusiasts and to show such promise for the future. To see a more detailed account of this history, go to the ISS homepage at www.shawsociety.org and click on the “ISS History” link near the top.

24 June 2018

The Three GALA hors d’oeuvres

ISS member Joan Templeton recently received one of Norway's highest honors, the rank of Commander in The Royal Norwegian Order of Merit, an award begun by King Olaf in 1985 to honor non-Norwegians and Norwegians who live abroad for their exceptional service to Norway. Templeton was awarded the honor for her "dissemination of Norwegian culture." Templeton is the past president of the Ibsen Society of America and the International Ibsen Committee (based at the Ibsen Center of the University of Oslo), and has organized conferences on Ibsen in the US, Norway, China, and elsewhere. She has lectured on Ibsen worldwide, including Scandinavia House, the NY Public LIbrary, and BAM in New York, the National Theatre in London, the National Theatre in Oslo, and many other venues. She is the editor of Ibsen News and Comment and author of twenty-five journal articles and two books on Ibsen: Ibsen's Women and Munch's Ibsen. Her

most recent book, Shaw's Ibsen, appeared earlier this year in the Palgrave MacMillan “Shaw and His Contemporaries” series.

Joan Templeton with Frode Helland, the Director of the Ibsen Center, the University of Oslo; he had just pinned the Maltese Cross on her lapel at the 14th International Ibsen Conference, in Skien, Norway (7 September 2018).

Ellen Dolgin reports on David Clare’s visit to Dominican College in November: “As coincidences do weigh in on our lives, David’s father is a former board member of my college. Further, his college, Mary Immaculate—part of Limerick University—and my college are planning to launch a student and faculty exchange program in the near future. The photo is from 16 November, after his lecture on ‘Bernard Shaw’s Inextinguishable Pride in Being an Irishman.’ Three of our senior English majors, Rob Stauffer, Prof. Lori Myers and Ellen are in the photo. David’s lecture featured Shaw’s three Irish plays and spoke of the Irishness of Pygmalion and of Shaw’s Joan. The following Monday/Tuesday David visited classes in playwriting/screenwriting, theatre management, and my literary studies class where we discussed Lady Gregory’s “The Rising of the Moon” and the founding principles of the Abbey Theatre. For some of the students who attended the lecture or were in the aforementioned classes, hearing about Shaw’s Joan reinforced Brigitte Bogar’s visit to Dominican in April 2018 and our “reprise” of the Joan plenary we had given at the Shaw Conference at NOTL in 2017. I also took students to see the Manhattan Theatre Club production of St. Joan in April, 2018.”

Passings

Charles A. Carpenter

Charles Albert Carpenter, Al, of Vestal, NY, passed away on July 30, 2018, in Cohoes, NY.

Al was born in Hazleton, PA, to Charles Albert Carpenter and Frances Mary Kenyon on June 8, 1929. He had four girls with his wife, Rosanne Rothrock. He married his second wife Martha Casella in 1992. Al was preceded in death by his beloved wife Martha and his parents and only sibling, Francy Roberts.

Al was a man of many great passions, especially for his four girls and their kids, his two wives in their time, his dogs, his academic work, Binghamton University, his family camp in the Adirondacks, the Shaw Festival, England's literary theater, senior softball, bridge, Hearts, mowing his lawn and shoveling his driveway. You could often find Al taking a break from his studies to walk his dog in Binghamton University's nature preserve.

He was an absolute ham and loved to make everyone laugh. His family and colleagues loved and admired him and will miss him very much.

After a decade as a college librarian, Al received a Ph.D. in English at Cornell University in 1963. He taught at the University of Delaware before moving to Binghamton University (BU) in 1967. After 28 years of teaching, he retired from BU in 1999 and became Professor Emeritus of English at Binghamton University.

Al was a prolific author throughout his career, publishing both literary works of modern drama and reference books. Starting in 1969 with his first book, Bernard Shaw and the Art of Destroying Ideals: The Early Plays, his literary

pursuits included Dramatists and the Bomb: American and British Playwrights Confront the Nuclear Age, 1945-1964 (1999) and Dramas of the Nuclear Age - A Descriptive List of English-Language Plays (2000). A second book on Shaw, Bernard Shaw as Artist-Fabian (2009), was followed in 2014 by a volume on Shaw and Gilbert Murray in the series Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw. He also compiled an annual bibliography of modern drama studies for the journal Modern Drama from 1972 to 1990. He published a two-volume set, Modern Drama Scholarship and Criticism 1966-1980: An International Bibliography (1986) and Modern Drama Scholarship and Criticism 1981-1990: An International Bibliography (1997).

In his 80s, Al published online bibliographies of Shaw (A Chronology of Works By and About Bernard Shaw) and O'Neill (Eugene O'Neill, 1888-1953: A Descriptive Chronology of His Plays, Theatrical Career, and Dramatic Theories). In 2011, Samuel Beckett The Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett: A Selective Bibliography of Publications About his Plays and their Conceptual Foundations was printed. Al authored over 100 essays in journals and books. Al made a 600-page Bernard Shaw's Letters to Individuals available in a Word document for a small fee. His last work Shaw's Drama Through the Years as Perceived by North American Playwrights, Drama Critics and Play Reviewers was completed in December 2015. In it, you can learn more about his years in retirement in his own words.

Outside of academia, Al also mediated for Broome County, schlepped books all over Binghamton, NY, for Good Reads. He became a Life Master and taught classes at the Binghamton Lyceum.

Al is survived by his four daughters, Carol Carpenter, Linda Maynard, Janet Sotola, Diane Carpenter, his 10 grandchildren, and dog Rascal. Carol is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and like her father earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University. She lives in Killingworth, Connecticut, with her daughter Margaret and Al's dog Rascal. Linda is a Bookkeeper and lives in Cedar Park, Texas, with her husband Arthur Maynard and children, Andy, Trey, Dakota and Georgia. Linda also has an adult son, Tony Northrup. Janet is a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner who lives in Altamont, New York, with her husband, Vaclav Sotola. They have two children, Alex who lives in Texas, and Lukas who lives in Iowa. Diane, a Grant Manager, lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her younger child, Kathryn. Her son, Nick and his wife Janeen, live close by in Richmond.

(Obituary posted at https://fredendallfuneralhome.com)

Al’s warmth, humor, and insight inspired and influenced countless Shaw scholars; in their own words, a few ISS members share their memories:

John McInerney

“Before I met Al, at a Shaw Symposium in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I was of course awed by the number and the significance of his publications. He is, I thought, a major scholar, a person of towering and still ongoing achievement. I was sure he would be a formidable person exuding impressive dignity. When I actually met him (we were sitting next to each other in the audience at a panel discussion), I was surprised and absolutely charmed by the man himself, who was the opposite of formidable. Instead, he was delightfully informal, unpretentious, humorous (even about himself), and more interested in everything and everyone around him (even an aging neophyte in Shaw scholarship like me) than in his status. From that time on, I regarded Al Carpenter as my unlikely but treasured friend, someone with whom I could always talk and laugh comfortably, even as I continued to admire his amazing work. I miss him very much.”

Bernie Dukore

“Al Carpenter and I go back a long time—to 1973, when he told me he had been one of the readers of my Bernard Shaw, Playwright, which was published that year. He didn’t believe in anonymity, he said. I sincerely thanked him, since his criticisms had been enormously valuable. I was and remain one of the many admirers of his invaluable Shavian and bibliographical work. Here, I’ll just add my name to what others say about it and then become personal.

After our initial exchange of letters, Al and I continued to correspond and soon became epistolary friends. We met, dined, and yakked—at a theatre conference and also, I vividly recall, in London—about plays seen, those to see or not to see, and personal matters. Later, we sometimes sent each other early drafts of our writings with the admonition to give the worst (which means best) criticism, which we did, to the other’s satisfaction. We corresponded, too, about events in our lives, both sad and happy. The last time we saw each other was in 2010, at the ISS conference in DC, where we shared a room. He intended to visit me in Blacksburg on a side trip when he would visit one of his daughters who lived in Virginia, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.

Since he went into an assisted living home I have especially missed him and his emails. Now, with the sad news of his death, I will continue to miss him.”

Sally Peters

“To hear of Charles A. Carpenter’s passing was to toll a bell on my own days long ago as a fledgling scholar. For I first encountered his work as a graduate student seeking to understand Shaw and to write a dissertation. Finding his Bernard Shaw and the Art of Destroying Ideals was heartening, offering a welcome clarity of thinking and prose style. When, many years later, I was asked to review Bernard Shaw as Artist-Fabian for the Annual of Shaw Studies, I immediately recalled my early days as a Carpenter admirer. I was struck by the thought that it would have been unimaginable to me at that earlier time to think I might someday pass judgment on his work. Reading his new book, I also was struck by his consistent and devoted view of Shaw over four decades. For in some ways the later book is a prequel to his first Shaw book, both concerned with elucidating the roots of Shaw’s self-described ‘worldbetterment craze’. I marveled at that consistency and that determination to elucidate, to explain, to educate--so very

Shavian. Furthermore, Charles A. Carpenter bridged the decades in two ways: first, proceeding as he did from Eric Bentley’s decades -old assertion that Shaw was “an artist in propaganda,” and then demonstrating in his own work that the pioneering scholarship of years past remains relevant, even as it is absorbed into new ways of approaching Shaw--surely a message of utmost importance. I met the man only briefly (‘Call me Al!’) but I vividly recall him and his sunshiny smile, his important work, and its value to me. Fired by his own personal sense of ‘worldbetterment craze’, Al Carpenter worked devotedly and tirelessly as a scholar throughout his life. Like other Shavians, I owe him a debt of gratitude and appreciation, send condolences to those close to him, and mourn his loss.”

Richard Dietrich

“Al and I go back a long way, and I can’t get the full story of our time together in this short form, so I’ll just remember a few of the times that are most memorable to me, more comic than not, and then end on a note that puts the emphasis of his life perhaps elsewhere than most might.

When I arrived at the U. of Delaware for my first teaching job, I was thrilled to find Al Carpenter already there. Al’s reaction was different. ‘Another Shavian? Why the hell did they hire another Shavian? Uh-oh.’ But he got over it, and, after five years of our having fun with that, he, in 1968, went one way (Binghamton, eventually) and I went another (USF in Tampa).

Many years went by with no communication, until, upon the founding of the ISS in 2004, I found Al again. Al the bibliographer, that is. Which was a dominant phase but only a phase. Like many in the early days of the ISS, Al at

the time we reconnected via email was learning the ABCs of the computer, and he was especially eager to master the beast because the internet looked like just the place to park a bibliographer’s masterpieces. But he tried doing it on his own at first, and, when this met with mostly frustration, he tried to make me his ‘tech guy’. The bibliographies he sent me in olden days were not of the sort you could say ‘presto’ to and expect magic. In trying to accommodate Al, I mostly learned a lot about what you can’t do on the Internet, especially back in the day when Apple and Microsoft weren’t much on speaking terms and computer crashes were frequent. Eventually we got The Monster Bib up and running, where it has served the ISS bountifully for many years, in newer and better forms. But oh the emails that flew through the air in those days, weighted down by many expletives, as his ‘tech guy’ went head on with ‘the bib guy’ about what was possible on the internet and what was not. One of the brightest days of my life was when Al hired his own tech guy at Binghamton, and real magic occurred. Free at last! Still, no one appreciates more the backbreaking work that went into those bibliographies. Bless Al for laboring for us all. Thank you, thank you, Al.

And then what relief when one day Al sent me the manuscript for Bernard Shaw as Artist-Fabian for inclusion in the University Press of Florida Shaw Series. Of course, it ended with pages of eye-crossing bibliography, but the rest of it was an excellent argument, one that I strongly recommend reading. I wrote as brilliant a Preface for it as I could, trying to sum up Al’s ingenious idea that Shaw’s ‘collectivism’ could only be understood as that of a highly ‘individualistic’ artist. Shaw’s socialism was uniquely of the kind no Marx could ever write of because it was quintessentially ‘artistic’. Shaw’s socialism advocated for the organizing of society to allow for greater individual freedom so that we could all be artists with our lives. I tried to sum up Al’s discovery this way: ‘Perhaps the most polished and professional of the “thought- carpenters’ of his time in presenting ideas, Shaw had the preacher’s knack, Carpenter aptly demonstrates, of using metaphor and powerful rhetorical and oratorical devices to convert ideas into feeling, of the sort that shocked into intellectual awakening and fresh thinking but then hopefully led to ‘conversion’ and commitment to a meliorating cause.’ What I wish to end with here, and stress, is that Al Carpenter, master bibliographer that he was, was quite as masterful at critical thinking and literary insight as well. Others are speaking of what a great friend and personality he was, which is true enough and my experience as well, but as someone who worked with Al on his work, I hope I’ve convinced my readers that his criticism should not be overlooked.”

END Back to https://shawsociety.org/ISS-Newsletters.htm for Galleries choice.

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