A Perpetual Fountain of Intellectual Energy

New at IWP Books: Desmond MacCarthy, Shaw, 1951. From Jacques Barzun’s review of the book:

Desmond MacCarthy has not in this country the reputation that he deserves. A few know him as the one-time editor of a periodical of the Thirties called Life and Letters, as the author of a book on the much earlier but no less significant Court Theatre, and as a critic at large for the New Statesman and the Sunday Times. He is also to be numbered among the band of learned lunatics (I profess to be one too) who take pleasure in the pseudo-scholarship of Sherlock Holmes. The reissue in book form of Mr. MacCarthy’s reviews of twenty Shaw plays should fill out this indistinct sketch and show the author for what he is — a judicious critic of drama who is also a strong admirer of Shaw.

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