Jun 15, 2023 - Sale 2641

Sale 2641 - Lot 97

Price Realized: $ 1,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
"EFFECTIVE ASSERTION IS THE ALPHA AND OMEGA OF STYLE" SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD. Autograph Letter Signed, "G.B.S.," to S. Clements, on a postcard, declining to help him write about Shaw's own writing style. 1 page, 12mo, personal stationery; faint discoloration from prior matting, remnants of hinging at upper corners verso, addressed in holograph on verso. Welwyn, 17 December 1949

Additional Details

In full: "I have said somewhere that effective assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style."
"I learned that from the Bible: 'now Barabbas was a robber' (he wasn't). 'There was not one--NOT ONE feeble person in all their tribes' (Handel) [in George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah, this sentence from the Book of Psalms is repeated]. 'Jesus wept' &c.
"Water has no taste because it is always in the mouth. For the like reason no writer is conscious of his own style; but when he quotes a passage from another writer his pen rebels.
"If you cannot write an essay on my style write one on something and somebody else, unless you have mistaken your profession and cannot write at all. I have not time to write it for you. It is easier to be a bootblack than a Shakespear if you are not born that way."