Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$581.55 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: A reprinting of the First Edition in June of the same year (1928), 495pp, bound in green cloth with ornamented gilt decorated front cover and spine, gilt lettering to spine. top edge gilt, minimal wear to the head and foot of spine, and while the prelims show some foxing, the rest of the volume is clean and clear. Provenance: this copy has been signed by Bernard Shaw, and dedicated by him to Emil Davies with the personal message "without whose instruction Heaven knows what my financial chapters would have been like!". Loosely inserted is the parcel post label from the publishers - Constable & Co, addressed to Emil Davies in Shaw's handwriting, duly stamped for the grand total of nine pence, Constable and Company Ltd., London, 1928.
Seller: K Books Ltd ABA ILAB, York, YORKS, United Kingdom
Price: US$620.33 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First Edition. Hardback. Dust Jacket. 8vo. pp xxxvi, 494. Original publisher's decorative olive green cloth, lettered gilt at the spine. Signed presentation from the author on the half title page, "To Rowland Estcourt, from Bernard Shaw." Attractive dust jacket designed by Eric Kennington. Rowland Estcourt was a member of the Fabian Society. George Bernard Shaw had attended one of his lectures. Small oval plate of Shaw on the title page. Faint staining to covers, otherwise clean, very good in bright colourful, near very good dust jacket with slight chips at edges. Not price-clipped.
Seller: Burwood Books, Wickham Market, United Kingdom
Price: US$969.26 + shipping
Description: First edition, first impression, inscribed by the author on the half-title "Inscribed for Mr. W. Rowley Bristow at the request of Miss Blanche Patch, G. Bernard Shaw". The recipient, Walter Rowley Bristow (1882-1947), was a British orthopaedic surgeon; the Rowley Bristow Orthopaedic Hospital in Surrey (active 1947-1990) was named after him. In a long and distinguished career he served as medical officer in Egypt and Gallipoli in the First World War, consulting surgeon at the Military Orthopaedic Hospital in Shepherd's Bush, consultant at the King Edward VIII Convalescent Home for Officers, and Hunterian Professor of the Royal College of Surgeons. Blanche Patch (1879-1966) was Shaw's secretary from 1920 till his death in 1950, responsible for converting his writings from Pitman shorthand into longhand typescripts, including this work. Shaw wrote to Nancy Astor about her role in his life: "Patient Patch does my business, types my shorthand for the printer, fills up all chinks in the housekeeping, knits for the soldiers and makes soft dolls for the Red Cross, and knows more about everybody in the village than I learned in thirty five years" (cited in Oakley, p. 195). Though there were some tensions between her and Shaw's wife Charlotte, Patch recorded with regard to this book, "Charlotte told me she was tired of hearing about his intelligent women and their socialism. Both of us implored GBS to hurry up and finish the thing" (ibid.). Shaw's socialist analysis of the modern economy grew out of a reply to his sister-in-law Mary Stewart Cholmondeley, who had asked for a summary of his ideas on socialism for her study circle. The book offers his fullest indictment of capitalism as the source of domestic injustice and international enmity, and argues an egalitarian society is the necessary future. Laurence A187. Ann Oakley, Forgotten Wives: How Women Get Written Out of History, 2021. Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, decoration to spine and front cover in green and gold, green endpapers, top edge gilt. New endpapers. Aside from trivial rubbing at extremities, a fine, tight, and clean copy.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom
Price: US$1000.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: FIRST EDITION. 8vo. pp xxxvi, 494. Original publisher's decorative olive green cloth, lettered gilt at the spine. Signed presentation from the author on a printed slip on the front endpaper with added hotel address hand-written, '[With Bernard Shaw's compliments] I have sent a copy to the Dean, G.B.S. [4 Whitehall Court, London S.W.1] The Malvern Hotel.' Social reform. Attractive dust jacket designed by Eric Kennington. Faint wear at spine ends, otherwise near fine in near fine dust jacket with very slight edgewear. No inscriptions, not price-clipped. First published in 1928 and addressed to the The Intelligent Woman (specifically his sister-in-law, Lady Mary Stewart Cholomondely), George Bernard Shaw's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism should be read by every American in the twenty-first century who has benefited, or ever will benefit, from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, disability, unemployment, food stamps, or any of the government's social insurance programs. The inequities of capitalism as an economic system are nothing new, and Shaw was one of the early champions of socialist reforms to protect the working class against the advantages capitalism gives those who control the means of production.
Seller: Reginald C. Williams Rare Books, Glendale, CA, U.S.A.
SHAW, George Bernard. Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. , 1928.
Price: US$1100.00 + shipping
Description: SHAW, George Bernard. The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. Original decorated cloth, T.e.g., housed in custom green morocco-backed slipcase, cloth dust jacket. London: Constable and Company, 1928. First edition. Laurence A187a. Wells 82. Presentation copy from the author to Maurice Baring, inscribed on the 1/2-title, "To Maurice Baring from Bernard Shaw." With Baring's bookplate on front pastedown. Maurice Baring (1874-1945) was a well known English man of letters-essayist, novelist, dramiatist, and poet. Spine and covers slightly faded and worn, else near fine.
Seller: G.S. MacManus Co., ABAA, Bryn Mawr, PA, U.S.A.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First edition, first printing. Signed by George Bernard Shaw on the half-title page and inscribed to a former owner, "To Sybil Rhondda's daughter Margaret / From Bernard Shaw (I have to put it this way because I thought Margaret was Sybil. Hence the ingenious alteration of the inscription)". Bound in publisher's original cloth. Very Good with cloth soiled, lightly rubbed and toned, pages toned. Ina Near Fine apparently supplied dust jacket with light wear and soiling, and an edge tear to the front flap.
Seller: Burnside Rare Books, ABAA, Portland, OR, U.S.A.
Price: US$1615.43 + shipping
Description: First edition, first impression, pre-publication presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title, "To Elizabeth Haldane from Bernard Shaw", with the publisher's slip loosely inserted reading "Please consider this book private until the 1st of June, the day of publication. G.B.S." Haldane (1862-1937) was a writer, suffragist, and social welfare worker who published widely - on nursing, on Hegel and Descartes, on George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell - and became the first female Justice of the Peace in Scotland in 1920. Shaw was a family acquaintance: he was close friends with two of Elizabeth's elder brothers, Richard Burdon Haldane (1856-1928), later Lord Haldane, and George Haldane (b. 1858), Shaw's exact contemporary. Richard was, like Shaw, a member of the Fabian Society, alongside Sidney Webb and Annie Besant, and they also shared membership of a smaller club called "The Co-Efficients". The Haldanes hosted regular dinners for groups of social reformers and British intellectuals that included Shaw, the Webbs, and their circle; Shaw was one of those invited to attend the dinner Richard gave in honour of Einstein's visit to London in 1921. (A presentation copy of Shaw's Back to Methuselah, "to Lord Haldane", is also known.) Each member of the Haldane family, of which Elizabeth was the only daughter, received a thorough, excellent education. "Elizabeth became a noted authority on the great French philosopher René Descartes. She wrote an impressive biography of the philosopher and translated French and German philosophical works into English - including Hegel's Philosophy of History. Not surprisingly, she also became deeply involved with the struggle of women to take their place in the professions, such as medicine. She took an active part in soliciting votes for women candidates for the local school boards that emerged throughout Scotland with the passage of the Scottish Education Act of 1872" (Vaughan). Shaw's socialist analysis of the modern economy grew out of a reply to his sister-in-law Mary Stewart Cholmondely, who had asked for a summary of his ideas on socialism for her study circle. Laurence A187. See Frederick Vaughan, Viscount Haldane: The Wicked Step-Father of the Canadian Constitution, 2010. Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, spine and front cover decorated in green and gilt, green endpapers, top edge gilt. With dust jacket, designed by Eric Kennington. Spine ends bumped, a few scratches to rear cover, outer leaves faintly foxed, contents otherwise clean; jacket lightly worn at edges with some tape reinforcement to verso, spine and rear panel rubbed, slight foxing to verso, front panel still bright: a very good copy in good jacket.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom