This book traces the effects of materiality - including money and its opposite, poverty - on the psychical lives of George Bernard Shaw and his characters. While this study focuses on the protagonists of the five novels Shaw wrote in the late 1870s and early 1880s, it also explores how materialism, feeling, and emotion are linked throughout his entire canon. At the same time, it demonstrates how Shaw’s conceptions of human subjectivity parallel those of two of his contemporaries, Sigmund Freud and Georg Simmel. In particular, this book explores how theories of so-called 'marginal economics' influence fin de siècle thought about human psychology and the sociology of the modern metropolis, particularly London.

“This excellent and learned work is a very welcome illumination not only of Shaw’s life and work but of the life and work of eminent contemporaries such as Darwin and Freud.” (Richard Farr Dietrich, Founding President of the International Shaw Society and Vice President of the Shaw Society UK)

Examines the relationship between materialism, feeling, and emotion throughout Shaw's canon Compares the work of Shaw, Sigmund Freud, and Georg Simmel in relation to human subjectivity Illuminates the life and work of Shaw as well as a number of eminent contemporaries, such as Charles Darwin

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