Books

First edition, first impression, pre-publication presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title, "To Elizabeth Haldane from Bernard Shaw", with the publisher's slip loosely inserted reading "Please consider this book private until the 1st of June, the day of publication. G.B.S." Haldane (1862-1937) was a writer, suffragist, and social welfare worker who published widely - on nursing, on Hegel and Descartes, on George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell - and became the first female Justice of the Peace in Scotland in 1920. Shaw was a family acquaintance: he was close friends with two of Elizabeth's elder brothers, Richard Burdon Haldane (1856-1928), later Lord Haldane, and George Haldane (b. 1858), Shaw's exact contemporary. Richard was, like Shaw, a member of the Fabian Society, alongside Sidney Webb and Annie Besant, and they also shared membership of a smaller club called "The Co-Efficients". The Haldanes hosted regular dinners for groups of social reformers and British intellectuals that included Shaw, the Webbs, and their circle; Shaw was one of those invited to attend the dinner Richard gave in honour of Einstein's visit to London in 1921. (A presentation copy of Shaw's Back to Methuselah, "to Lord Haldane", is also known.) Each member of the Haldane family, of which Elizabeth was the only daughter, received a thorough, excellent education. "Elizabeth became a noted authority on the great French philosopher René Descartes. She wrote an impressive First edition, first impression, pre-publication presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title, "To Elizabeth Haldane from Bernard Shaw", with the publisher's slip loosely inserted reading "Please consider this book private until the 1st of June, the day of publication. G.B.S." Haldane (1862-1937) was a writer, suffragist, and social welfare worker who published widely - on nursing, on Hegel and Descartes, on George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell - and became the first female Justice of the Peace in Scotland in 1920. Shaw was a family acquaintance: he was close friends with two of Elizabeth's elder brothers, Richard Burdon Haldane (1856-1928), later Lord Haldane, and George Haldane (b. 1858), Shaw's exact contemporary. Richard was, like Shaw, a member of the Fabian Society, alongside Sidney Webb and Annie Besant, and they also shared membership of a smaller club called "The Co-Efficients". The Haldanes hosted regular dinners for groups of social reformers and British intellectuals that included Shaw, the Webbs, and their circle; Shaw was one of those invited to attend the dinner Richard gave in honour of Einstein's visit to London in 1921. (A presentation copy of Shaw's Back to Methuselah, "to Lord Haldane", is also known.) Each member of the Haldane family, of which Elizabeth was the only daughter, received a thorough, excellent education. "Elizabeth became a noted authority on the great French philosopher René Descartes. She wrote an impressive biography of the philosopher and translated French and German philosophical works into English - including Hegel's Philosophy of History... Not surprisingly, she also became deeply involved with the struggle of women to take their place in the professions, such as medicine. She took an active part in soliciting votes for women candidates for the local school boards that emerged throughout Scotland with the passage of the Scottish Education Act of 1872" (Vaughan). Shaw's socialist analysis of the modern economy grew out of a reply to his sister-in-law Mary Stewart Cholmondely, who had asked for a summary of his ideas on socialism for her study circle. READ MORE Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, spine and front cover decorated in green and gilt, green endpapers, top edge gilt. With dust jacket, designed by Eric Kennington. Spine ends bumped, a few scratches to rear cover, outer leaves faintly foxed, contents otherwise clean; jacket lightly worn at edges with some tape reinforcement to verso, spine and rear panel rubbed, slight foxing to verso, front panel still bright: a very good copy in good jacket. Laurence A187. See Frederick Vaughan, Viscount Haldane: The Wicked Step-Father of the Canadian Constitution, 2010.