REPRINTS AND NEW EDITIONS

Press, Volume C, Issue 29656, 28 October 1961, Page 3

REPRINTS AND NEW EDITIONS

Bernard Shaw: His Life and Personality. By Hesketh Pearson. Methuen. 474 pp. Index. This book is a reprint with slight additions of a work that first appeared some 20 years ago. Although the author’s range of interest as a biographer is so vast that he may be suspected of superficiality in some cases, his "Bernard Shaw” will probably always be of special interest to students of literature. It is certainly not perfectly accurate and much more penetrating studies have already been written. It is unique, however, in that Shaw himself had so much to do with it. This is what his life seemed like to him. looking back on it from the standpoint of advanced old age. Vivacity is the keynote of his account of himself and his action, and a good example of his style and one which illustrates his virtues and his shortcomings occurs in the discussion of "Captain Brassbound’s Conversion,” pp. 211-212. The postscripts included in this edition have already appeared in print. They are a record of some of Shaw’s more contankerous moods and are still entertaining to read.