SHAW GEORGE BERNARD: (1856-1950) Irish Playwright, Nobel Prize winner for Literature, 1925. A.L.S., G. Bernard Shaw, to the lower half of the second page of an original typed manuscript prepared by Shaw, two pages, 4to, Adelphi Terrace, 2nd August 1926, to Leonard Woolf (‘My dear Woolf’). Shaw writes, in full, ‘Here is my expansion of your questionnaire. Many of the original questions were ambiguous. I don’t think any of these can be answered by a double entendre. I am just starting for Italy, dead beat’. The typescript is entitled Suggested Amendment of The Nation Questionnaire on Religious Belief by Bernard Shaw and comprises seventeen numbered questions including ‘1. Do you believe in an anthropomorphic God, external to his creatures?....3. Do you believe in personal immortality? 4. Do you desire personal immortality; and if so, is it for your own sake or for the sake of some beloved deceased whom you wish to meet again?....7. Are you an active member of a Church?....9. Do you believe that the Universe is a product of accidental physical and chemical action, cold, indifferent and meaningless? If so, to what do you attribute the difference between a dead body and a living one? 10. Do you believe in heaven or hell as actual spatial localities in the Universe in which immortal souls spend eternity?.....12. Do you believe in any form of evolution?.....14. Do you accept the first chapter of Genesis as historical?.....’ An interesting letter and manuscript. A slight paperclip rust stain appears to the upper left corner of each page, not affecting the text or signature, and with some slight creasing, otherwise about VG

Leonard Woolf (1880-1969) English Political Theorist & Author, husband of Virginia Woolf.

The Nation was a political weekly newspaper formed in 1921. Woolf served as literary editor from 1923-30.