Scaling Everest: A Secondary Bibliography of GBS

Book Reviews, Volume 32:1, 1988 SCALING EVEREST! A SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GBS G. B. Shaw: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him. General Editor, W. Eugene Davis. Volume I: 1871-1930. J. P. Wearing, ed. Volume II: 1931-1956. Elsie B. Adams and Donald C. Haberman, eds. Volume III: 1957-1978. Donald C. Haberman, ed. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986 and 1987. $45.00 Each Years ago when the late Helmut E. Gerber proposed an annotated secondary bibliography of Bernard Shaw there was widespread doubt among Shavians that so daunting a project could be completed. Given Shaw's prolific output and many interests plus his widespread fame and contentiousness as a public figure, was such an effort practical or possible? What crannies held souls intrepid enough to tackle the Everest of writings about him? Well, skepticism and faintness of heart be ditched. Academic Hillarys have emerged. The mountain has been scaled. Generations of scholars will be indebted to Gerber and Davis, the editors, and many contributors who have made these volumes possible. Gerber's goals for his Annotated Bibliography Series were to provide a record of everything written about each author, eliminate duplication of scholarship and fruitless research, make obscure and foreign-language items available, provide a reference for students of cultural history, and index the materials thoroughly. The editors of this edition admit that in Shaw's case they have been compelled to compromise between utter comprehensiveness and practicality. Short of being buried by the mountain of materials, they have skirted its crevasses, observing its substrata selectively. Without such prudence the bibliography would not be with us; with it the editors and their readers escape burdensome repetitiousness. As working tools, each of the volumes includes five indexes. These cite all references to Shavian titles and list secondary works according to author, title, periodicals or newspapers, and foreign languages. The last two would seem to be least significant, yet they provide handy access to Shaw's worldwide reputation. Their numbers alone tell a story. From 1901 to 1930 the New York Times devoted 705 entries to Shaw while the London Times published 364 and the Irish Times only 12. For whatever reason, his personality and utterances struck more chords across the Atlantic than at home. Delving into the entries produces more specific insights: the New York Times often found Shaw newsworthy on page one, two, or three; the Catholic World's few articles are buried and repeatedly hostile. Foreign language entries for this time reveal German interest exceeding that of the French and 71 Book Reviews, Volume 32:1, 1988 Spanish by a wide margin, while Romanian and Japanese attention exceeds the Italian and Russian. Subsequent to 1930, German entries still prevail, but those in Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and Hungarian increase greatly, while French items dwindle. (An entry from the Journal des Débats finds Shaw's plays "destined for a small minority of intellectuals"-a sentiment Shaw might have cited when he declared that intellect is not a strong point with the French.) The secondary author indexes are valuable for obvious reasons, but a rationale for the indexes of secondary titles is harder to conceive. Totaling 218 pages, the latter are not only far longer than the others but also the least practical. How can an alphabetical listing of 8,767 titles-most of them very obscure-be used, short of scanning them all? These many pages might have been the most rather than the least convenient of the volumes had they been devoted to subject indexes, where topics such as Shaw and Shakespeare, Ibsen, religion, or democracy would be at one's fingertips, not deeply buried. A less serious but bothersome matter of judgment occurs in the text of the volumes. Each follows a sensible year-by-year chronology, but under each year entries are listed alphabetically by author, not chronologically according to the date of first publication. As a result, they thwart easy access to developing issues or subjects, such as evolving notice of Shaw's views on World War I or critical opinions on the performance of one of his plays. Volume I compensates for this awkwardness somewhat by clustering extra references to certain...