Palgrave Macmillan will soon be launching a new book series Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries with Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel and Peter Gahan as series editors. The series aims to show how Bernard Shaw—dramatist, critic, essayist, journalist, lecturer, socialist, feminist, and pamphleteer—functioned for his contemporaries, some of whom were in reaction against him, as the key literary, theatrical, and cultural figure he undoubtedly was in his own time. Indeed, this process of Shaw illuminating his period may work in both directions: by examining Shaw in the context of, for example, post-WW1 modernists aspects of modernism in his own work can appear more clearly. Shaw the controversialist’s constant efforts to encourage dialogue with contemporary writers, critics, and other figures in many different areas helped usher in the modern age at the beginning of the twentieth century and later the various modernist art movements during the interwar years leading to late modernism after the war, right up to the multi-cultural, post-colonial, post-postmodern world of today. In making Shaw its focus, the series hopes to illuminate not only his own work and influence on contemporary writers and cultural movements in England and Ireland, but also in continental Europe, North America, former socialist countries, Latin countries, and the British Commonwealth countries. Each volume in the series will feature Shaw and his work in the context of one or more of his major contemporaries, while some volumes may use Shaw as the starting-point rather than as its central theme.
Please note: The series editors will particularly welcome manuscripts that seek to explore Shaw within his Irish contexts.
The series editors are now soliciting new manuscripts and submissions for subjects suitable for inclusion in the series, and either or both editors can be approached at the following email addresses:
Nelson Ritschel Peter Gahan