Introduction

Abstract

The Introduction opens by outlining the book’s focus on Shaw’s journalism, outside of his literary, art, music, and theater criticism that was forged during the 1880s in London and continued throughout the years of the Great War. It is argued that Shaw’s journalism began to take shape years prior to completing his first plays, just as New Journalism began to emerge. Furthermore, it is suggested, as a premise of the book, that Shaw’s playwriting career and political activism owed much, if not everything, to his journalistic efforts which pointed the way to modernization. The Introduction also provides an outline of Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5, in which Shaw’s journalism is discussed and evaluated as a response to the sensationalizing and shock journalism pioneered by journalist W. T. Stead and popularly practiced by his journalistic disciples. Shaw’s efforts, it is asserted, were often meant to counter or offer a reasoned response to Stead’s, and the Stead-like journalism that obscured facts in its quest to sensationalize for popularity. The Introduction explains that Shaw’s journalistic example of criticizing and questioning society, whether it was the absurd popular shock press of Stead and his followers, or a seemingly inept war government, represented the finest ideals of New Journalism and, in fact, the highest ideals of the free press.