George Bernard Shaw went his whole life without learning how to read and write.
George Bernard Shaw ( [ ˈdʒɔːrdʒ _ ` bɜːrˌnərd_ʃɔː ] 26 July 1856 -- 2 November 1950 ) , known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw , was an Irish playwright ( who held both British and Irish citizenship ) , critic and polemicist whose influence on Western theatre , culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond . He wrote more than sixty plays , including major works such as Man and Superman ( 1903 ) , Pygmalion ( 1913 ) and Saint Joan ( 1923 ) . Born in Dublin , Shaw moved to London in 1873 , where he established himself as a writer and novelist . Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success , 1894 's Arms and the Man . His appetite for politics and controversy remained undiminished ; by the late 1920s he had largely renounced Fabian gradualism and often wrote and spoke favourably of dictatorships of the right and left -- he expressed admiration for both Mussolini and Stalin .