Beschreibung:

SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD. Autograph manuscript (or "private letter") signed on the invention of an international language, "Great Western Hotel, Oban, Argyle," 26 August 1924, 3 pages, small 4to, about 520 words in pencil on rectos of three sheets, a working draft with numerous revisions , signed and dated at end: "It is clear that we need an international language, and equally clear that it must be a manufactured one, experience having shown that the grammatical inflexions with which all existing languages are cluttered up are unnecessary...If we only had the sense and energy to reform our ridiculous spelling, pidgin English would have quite a good chance of becoming a universal language. As it is, pidgin Spanish may beat it...But we really ought to be able to invent a language instead of waiting for the chances of the survival of the fittest, which are inseparable from the chances of the survival of the unfittest"; Autograph note signed on the bottom margin of a typed transcript of the preceding manuscript, Cap d'Antibes, 22 August 1928, the note and transcript comprising 1 page, 4to, upper left blank corner cut away, with two ink corrections by Shaw on the transcript , his note reading: "This is evidently by me; but I have no recollection of its publication. It reads like one of my private letters to Professor [Jespersen?], whose [Novial?] seems to me to be the best of the crop of artifical languages which followed [Volapuk?] and Esperanto"; Autograph postcard signed to Bolton Hall in New York, London, 6 July 1928, 1 page, oblong 12mo , giving a criticism of The Readers Bible : "The book is so loaded with prosaic stuff which makes its elevated style ridiculous (like the Elizabethan plays and blank verse), and so much of this stuff is obsolete or totally uninteresting that the only way to save the ship is to jettison half the cargo. Your enterprise needs no justification in spite of the curse in the last chapter [of Revelations]..."; Autograph letter signed to Bolton Hall regarding the previous postcard, Cap d'Antibes, 3 September 1928, 1 page, 8vo, fold creases , with integral leaf bearing a revised typescript signed of Shaw's previous postcard on The Readers Bible, 1 page, 8vo, double-spaced, with about 28 holograph words of revisions in ink by Shaw , signed at end, Shaw's letter reading; "I have no objection to your using the letter (as amended opposite); but Mr. [Alfred] Knopf [the publisher] has overlooked the fact that it implies a condemnation of your presentation of the gospels. You cannot possibly combine Matthew & Mark with Luke, or the three of them with John, without making a sort of three headed monster of Jesus, and representing him as at the same time a popular metropolitan preacher and a wandering provincial evangelist...But if I were you I should dispense with this particular testimonial. When my publicity is concerned American publishers become mere lunatics"; together 4 items . (4)