To begin at the end of this substantial and painstakingly edited volume of correspondence: just before undergoing an operation for renal cancer in 1924, theater critic and Ibsen translator William Archer sent letters to a few of his closest friends, including Bernard Shaw, to whom he wrote, “This episode gives me an excuse for saying, which I hope you don't doubt—namely, that though I may sometimes have played the part of the all-too candid mentor, I have never wavered in my admiration and affection for you, or ceased to feel that the Fates have treated me kindly in making me your contemporary and friend.” Shaw's other close friend, Sidney Webb, who served for Shaw as Archer's counterpart in the political world, would in his turn say much the same thing, thus giving the lie to Oscar Wilde's quip, which Shaw so liked to quote against himself, that Bernard Shaw hasn't...

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