1
The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Irrational Knot, by George Bernard Shaw This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Irrational Knot Being the Second Novel of His Nonage
Author: George Bernard Shaw
Release Date: February 28, 2004 [EBook #11354]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IRRATIONAL KNOT ***
Produced by Rick Niles, John Hagerson and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE IRRATIONAL KNOT
BY BERNARD SHAW BEING
THE SECOND NOVEL OF HIS NONAGE
1905
PREFACE
TO THE AMERICAN EDITION OF 1905
This novel was written in the year 1880, only a few years after I had exported myself from Dublin to London in a condition of extreme rawness and inexperience concerning the specifically English side of the life with which the book pretends to deal. Everybody wrote novels then. It was my second attempt; and it shared the fate of my first. That is to say, nobody would publish it, though I tried all the London publishers and some American ones. And I should not greatly blame them if I could feel sure that it was the book's faults and not its qualities that repelled them.
I have narrated elsewhere how in the course of time the rejected MS. became Mrs. Annie Besant's excuse for lending me her ever helping hand by publishing it as a serial in a little propagandist magazine of hers. That was how it got loose beyond all possibility of rec