George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish writer. He is more well known for his plays , he wrote more than sixty plays. Initially, he was considered a failure as his works were rejected. Due to a series of rejected works (1879- 1883), his literary earnings remained negligible[All of the five unsuccessful novels written between 1879 and 1883, at the start of his career eventually were published] . But he never gave up hope. He continued to strive and ultimately his situation improved in the year 1885, when he became able to support himself as an art and literary critic. His will power and his passion for literature did not forsake him and in fact he was honoured in the year 1925 when he won a Nobel Prize for his contribution to literature and an Oscar (1938) for Pygmalion. He was a strong advocate for socialism and women's rights and a harsh critic of formal education.

"Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents."[ Taken from: Letter, August 7, 1919, to Thomas Demetrius O'Bolger. "Biographers' Blunders Corrected," Sixteen Self Sketches, Constable (1949)]

He was a vegetarian and teetotaller, Shaw died in 1950 at the age of 94.