The Metamorphoses of The Shaw Review

THE METAMORPHOSES OF THE SHAW REVIEW BULLETIN NUMBER ONE of the newly-founded (1950) Shaw Society of America appeared in February, 1951. It was a modest affair of eight pages, but represented much spadework on the part of the editor, William D. Chase of the Flint (Mich.) Journal. On the first page was a message from GBS, written just a few months before he died in November , 1950. Inside were comments of an elegiac turn, and news of Shavian interest. The second issue took on the dignity of 'Volume 1, Number 2," and added some pages of articles and a continuing current bibliography of Shaviana. By Number Three the journal had definitely grown from Society organ to become The Shaw Bulletin, and conta,ined valuable pieces on Shaw letters and manuscripts, a critique of Buoyant Billions by Felix Grendon, and other articles. By 1953 the journal was well launched-so well that some issues are now rare enough-and in enough demand-to rank as collector's items. Such, for example, as Number. Four, which featured "Dickens and Shaw," by Edgar Johnson, biographer of Boz; or Number Five, which contained Carl J. Weber's revealing "A Talk with Bernard Shaw." The fifth issue (May, 1954) announced the transfer of editorial reins to Dan H. Laurence of Hofstra College, and the intended publication of The Shaw Bulletin on a regular three-a-year basis (January, May and September )-a schedule still followed in the journal's latest metamorphosis. Later issues in the first volum~ featured several exciting items in Shavian scholarship-a series on the Blanco Posnet controversy, including littleknown pieces by Shaw, Yeats and Joyce; two articles by Archibald Henderson anticipating his third biography of Shaw; Frank Scully's revelation of his ghosting of Frank Harris's Shaw biography; and Mr. Laurence's article demonstrating the completeness of Shaw's last cCunfinished" playlet, Why She Would Not. However with the onset of Mr. Laurence's long illness'in 1955,1 the journal suspended publication temporarily. Publi.cation was resumed in 1956 when the present editor transferred the editorial address to The Pennsylvania State Uxrlversity. The first issue emanating from University Park (I, 10) contained a much-quotedfrom essay by librettist Alan Jay Lerner on the making of My Fair Lady from Pygmalion.2 Volume II began in 1957 (and ends with the current 1. He is now active again, as the pages of this issue of Modem Drama elsewhere indicate. 2. First presented as a speech to a Shaw Society of America meeting in New York City. 162 1959 METAMORPHOSES OF THE SHA.W REVIEW 163 issue), the second number notable for an eightieth birthday salute to Shaw's authorized biographer, Archibald Henderson, by Brooks Atkinson and an exhaustive bibliography of Hendersonian writings on the modem drama by Lucile Kelling.. Also prominent was an exhibit in evidence that the journal did not intend to be or to become an apologist for, or panegyrist of, Bernard Shaw-·in an outspoken article by the rarely printed (in America) Henry Miller. Later tables of contents listed "Romain Rolland and George Bernard Shaw," "Shaw and Restoration Comedy," a symposium on "Ideas and the Theatre," and "Saint Joan and Motion Picture Censorship." By the end of 1957, the Pennsylvania State University Press (setting an enlightened and challenging precedent for the academic press) had become co-publisher-with The Shaw Society of America-of the journal, a step·which has led to continued expansion in size and coverage, and (in 1959) a fonnat face-lifting, coupled with name change to The Shaw Review. The present title, with which the journal opens Volume III in 1960, indicates an ability to publish articles of greater length and scope than heretofore, and the intention to focus not only upon GBS, but also upon the individuals in each generation of his continued creativity upon whom his impact was felt, and, in turn, who had some effect upon his own thought and work. Past articles in Volume II on Granville Barker and Edward Garnett have already indicated this trend. Bernard Shaw is, of course, the core of the journal; thus special issues from time to time will feature particular aspects of...