Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb on Poverty and Equality in the Modern World, 1905–1914

Peter Gahan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9783319484419
• eBook ISBN: 9783319484426
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

This book investigates how, alongside Beatrice Webb'sground-breakingpre-World War One anti-poverty campaigns, George Bernard Shaw helped launch the public debate about the relationship between equality, redistribution and democracy in a developed economy.

The ten years following his great 1905 play on poverty Major Barbara present a puzzle to Shaw scholars, who have hitherto failed to appreciate both the centrality of the idea of equality in major plays like Getting Married, Misalliance, and Pygmalion, and to understand that his major political work, 1928's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism had its roots in this periodbefore the Great War.As both the era's leading dramatist and leader of the Fabian Society, Shawproposedhis radical postulate of equal incomes as a solution to those twin scourges ofamodern industrial society: poverty and inequality.Set against the backdrop of Beatrice Webb's famous Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law 1905-1909 – a publication whichled to grass-roots campaigns against destitution and eventually the Welfare State –this book considers how Shaw worked with Fabian colleagues, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and H. G. Wells to explorethrough a series of major lectures, prefaces and plays, the social, economic, political, and even religious implications of human equalityas the basis for modern democracy.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Chapter 1: 1884–1904: Introduction
• Chapter 2: 1905: Poverty, Salvation and the Poor Law Commission. Major Barbara
• Chapter 3: 1905–9: Noises Off—H. G. Wells Among the Fabians. Votes for Women!
• Chapter 4: 1909: The Minority Report. Getting Married and Misalliance
• Chapter 5: 1910: Campaign for the Prevention of Destitution. Eugenics and ‘Equality’
• Chapter 6: 1911: Travels. Fanny’s First Play
• Chapter 7: 1912: War on Poverty
• Chapter 8: 1913: The New Statesman and the Fabian Research Department. Religion and ‘The Case for Equality’
• Chapter 9: 1914: ‘On Redistribution’ and War. Pygmalion
• Chapter 10: 1915–50: Epilogue—Heartbreak and Progress
• Abbreviations
• Works Cited
• Index