of The University of North Carolina
“The book is a most remarkable achievement.”—George Bernard Shaw, in the Morning Post (London), May 3, 1911.
“Mr. Shaw is explored from every point of view.... Newspaper files have been ransacked, forgotten controversies between dramatic critics or different kinds of Socialists have been unearthed, profound researches made into contemporary literature suggesting parallels and illustrations, stray thoughts gathered up and traced in their development from childhood to middle age....
“We cannot praise Mr. Henderson too highly. We know of nothing in the literature of biography that is so exhaustively complete.”—Westminster Gazette (London), April 22, 1911.
“Its comprehensiveness gives it the importance of an historical document.... It is something more than a chronicle of the life of Mr. Bernard Shaw, it is a remarkable chronicle of English revolutionary movements during the last twenty-five years.... In the sixteen chapters of his book, Dr. Henderson tells the history of the idea movements of the last quarter of a century apropos of Bernard Shaw.... The reader who cannot find instruction and entertainment within its covers lacks the art of reading.”—Holbrook Jackson, in the Bookman (London), May, 1911.
“Dr. Henderson's authorized and critical biography ... is indispensable.... The fullest, the best informed, and the most carefully studied account of Bernard Shaw that has yet been published.... The book will rank immediately after Mr. Shaw's own works as material for students of the advanced tendencies of which in this country the author of John Bull's Other Island is the most conspicuous representative....”—The Scotsman (Edinburgh), April 13, 1911.
“A biography that could scarcely be bettered.... It is full, minute, and exact. Biographer and autobiographer have joined forces, and the result is a masterly study of the most complicated personality of our time.... The author has spared no pains in verifying his references and arranging his materials. Here you have Shaw in his quiddity.... Dr. Henderson out-Boswells Boswell in his enormous pertinacity, his prodigious fidelity. He has not left a crumb for other biographers.”—James Douglas, in the Star (London), April 15, 1911.
“It would be hard to find anyone perfectly equipped for the task (of writing Shaw's biography). Mr. Granville Barker ... would have shown a more intelligent sympathy in Mr. Shaw's ideals. But we should have had as much Barker as Shaw. Our lily would have been painted. Mr. Archer might have seized the opportunity to set up that guillotine for which he once sighed. Mr. Webb would have been unreliable once inside the theatre. We might have had a score of articles from various writers, each qualified to speak on one aspect of Mr. Shaw, but we should then have been like children with the pieces of a puzzle, unable to fit them together. No, Professor Henderson is not easily dethroned....
“The book is almost a history of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and ... it has not a dull moment.”—Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette (London), April 11, 1911.
“At length comes the really big thing, ... and following precedent, it comes from the home of big things, America. Dr. Henderson ... is not only elaborate in his interpretation of our leading dramatist and controversialist, but comprehensive as well. His book is ... a mine in which all future students of George Bernard Shaw will be forced to dig and delve.... Nothing is impossible to this amazingly energetic American professor.... Professor Henderson is an interpreter of modern ideas. He feels that we are in the midst of a remarkable intellectual awakening, and he is impelled ... to give his complex and multiplex period a coherent voice....