Bernard Shaw’s Novels—Emergent Interior Authors

Bernard Shaw produced five novels at the beginning of his writing career. These fledgling works feature characters who write, both interior and exterior authors, who, like their creator, write in various forms and genres. These characters feel the sting of censorship, albeit in differing degrees from those in Shaw’s dramas. I identity Shaw’s early interior authors as Robert Smith in Immaturity, Elinor McQuinch in The Irrational Knot, Lydia Carew in Cashel Byron’s Profession, and Sidney Trefusis in The Unsocial Socialist. This chapter features two of these nascent interior authors, Robert Smith and Elinor McQuinch and explores the development of the novel form, primarily in England.