George Bernard Shaw's "Heartbreak House" - A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes The author George Bernard Shaw -he later dropped the name George- was born in Dublin in 1856, the third and youngest child of an alcoholic father and an undomestic mother. He developed an interest in literature, music and painting at a very early age, but was never enabled to go to university. At the age of fifteen he became an apprentice and during he stay there he started writing short literary articles for newspapers and magazines, with little succ ....