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Lot 115

SHAW (GEORGE BERNARD)

10 November 2009, 11:00 GMT

London, New Bond Street

Sold for £1,200 inc. premium

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SHAW (GEORGE BERNARD)

Collection including an autograph letter to F.V. Conolly, on the suitability of black actors to play Shakespeare, Shaw or Archer (“…The notion that there is anything funny in a man or woman being black is as childish as the notion that there is anything funny in being white, although no doubt the first white man in Africa must have elicited shouts of laughter from adults, and terrified the children into convulsions…”), written on the reverse of Conolly’s letter to Shaw, 1919; signed authorization, licensing Jack Dwan’s Company to play O’Flaherty VC at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1927 (“…O’Flaherty should be a young soldier and a very sweet one. The least touch of Irish slovenliness or provinciality would contradict the whole point of the play. There must be no attempt to make it stage-funny or stage-Irish…”); two autograph letters to the novelist Storm Jameson, refusing to donate manuscripts to a wartime Red Cross charity sale (“…The work of the Red Cross should be done by the Government and paid for out of the National Revenue… I have never autographed a book for sale nor allowed a play of mine to be performed without author’s fees. Would you have me, at 85, break this glorious record to enable our warmongers to exploit your generous heart and pay their way by private cadging?...”) and describing himself as an old hand as regards admiration of Communism and Soviet Russia (“…Lenin was the bogey man of the west, I sent him one of my books with a dedication that left George Washington nowhere… when I was there in 1931… I was treated as if I was Karl Marx in person…”), 1942; and a signed photograph showing Shaw writing at his desk, on the reverse of an autograph postcard to Madge McIntosh (“…Dash it all, my dear Madge, dont you realize that the moment a word is breathed of a new play everyone who has ever spoken a line of mine demands a part?...”), 1933

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ARCHITECTURE - ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL
Manuscript planning brief for work under the supervision of Inigo Jones, [c.1631]

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for 'The Suffragette' newspaper, [c.1913-1914]

ARCHITECTURE - STUART (JAMES) AND NICHOLAS REVETT
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ILLUMINATED ADDRESS – CLARA CODD
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ARMENIAN - HISTORY, THEOLOGY AND PRINTING
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BANK NOTES - MANUFACTURING
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