SHAW, George Bernard

Candida: A Mystery

Revised edition, revised and reprinted for this standard edition. Fine, lacking the dustwrapper. This copy Inscribed by the author: "To Lady Astor from her friend. George Bernard Shaw. 24th March 1937." Despite his disdain for the aristocracy, Shaw and Lady Astor were great friends. It was she who in 1931, the year this book was published, persuaded Shaw, the armchair socialist and communist-sympathizer, to join her party and finally visit Russia. During the course of their visit, Lady Astor talked them into an audience with Stalin (even though he was unavailable to both the English and American ambassadors), where she proceeded to lecture him on the foibles of the Russian method of childcare and the superiority of her own techniques. According to Shaw, Stalin's effort "to silence Lady Astor was about as successful as an effort by a fly to make head against a whirlwind. Her fearless impetuosity rocked the Kremlin to its foundations... Stalin, overwhelmed, soon guessed that this feminine tornado had perhaps something to teach him..." The American press was much more interested in the minor scandal that ensued on the return voyage when Lady Astor was photographed in the act of washing Shaw's beard (fear not -- it was at the request of Mrs. Shaw). A very nice association.

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