SHAW GEORGE BERNARD Two items each to Jean Edmond Gardere Au

Sale 2333 - Lot 290

Price Realized: $ 2,860

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000

"EUROPE FROM THE 17TH TO THE 19TH CENTURY WAS ENTIRELY GODLESS" SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD. Two items, each to Jean Edmond Gardere: Autograph Letter Signed, "G. Bernard Shaw" * Autograph Note Signed, "GBS." The letter, written in the blank space below Garderes's letter to him asking whether Shaw had encountered a civilization without gods, in red ink, stating that 17th-19th century European government was godless. 1 page, 4to, "J.E. Garderes" stationery; minor scattered staining, horizontal folds. The note, written in the lower margin of a printed article, in purple ink, denying a phase in the article which Shaw has marked with an asterisk: "G.B. Shaw, born a son of Calvin, has kept none of the convictions of his birthright." The article, a discussion of the film, Song of Bernadette, torn from the August 1, 1942 issue of America magazine. 4to; signature affected by staining and folds, some loss at horizontal folds. [London?], 28 August 1942

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

The letter: "I should say that the government of Europe from the 17th to the 19th century was entirely godless, though nominally Christian and Jehovistic. Voltaire, Robespierre, and Napoleon agreed that if there were no god it would be politically necessary to invent one; but they were not satisfied with the results of Bourbon civilization. One of my most surprising achievements was to bring back religion to the British drama, in which it was then mentioned and impersonated only to be ridiculed as Dickens ridiculed Chadbond and Stiggins or defamed as Molière defamed Tartuffe. The revival began in France with Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean."
The note: "This is one of the many Shaw myths. I am by baptism a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland; but I was still a small boy when my parents gave up all religious observances and I deliberately gave up saying my prayers."