George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 and grew up in a Protestant middle-class family whose fortunes had declined. He left Ireland for London as a young man, where he gradually established himself as a writer, critic, and public intellectual.

Shaw became one of the most influential playwrights of his generation. His plays were often funny, but beneath the wit lay serious questions about class, poverty, politics, marriage, war, and the inequalities of society.

Works such as Pygmalion, Man and Superman, and Saint Joan made him internationally famous. In 1925, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Shaw spent most of his adult life in England, but his Irish upbringing remained part of the perspective he brought to the world. He belonged to a remarkable generation of Irish writers who carried Ireland's intellectual and literary voice far beyond the island.