Claim: George Bernard Shaw wrote the play Major Barbara in 1856.

George Bernard Shaw -LRB- -LSB- ˈdʒɔːrdʒ _ ` bɜːrˌnərd_ʃɔː -RSB- 26 July 1856 -- 2 November 1950 -RRB- , known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw , was an Irish playwright -LRB- who held both British and Irish citizenship -RRB- , 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 -LRB- 1903 -RRB- , Pygmalion -LRB- 1913 -RRB- and Saint Joan -LRB- 1923 -RRB- . With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory , Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation . He was the first person to be awarded both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award , receiving the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature and sharing the 1938 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film version of Pygmalion .   Born in Dublin , Shaw moved to London in 1873 , where he established himself as a writer and novelist . By the mid-1880s he was a respected theatre and music critic . Following a political awakening , he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer . Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success , 1894 's Arms and the Man . Influenced by Henrik Ibsen , he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama , using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political , social and religious ideas . By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included Major Barbara , The Doctor 's Dilemma and Caesar and Cleopatra .   Shaw 's expressed views were often contentious : he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform while opposing vaccination and organised religion . He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as equally culpable . He castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period , and became a citizen of the Irish Free State in 1934 , maintaining dual citizenship . He was prolific , finishing during the inter-war years a series of often ambitious plays which achieved varying degrees of popular success . 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 . In the final decade of his life , he made fewer public statements , but continued to write prolifically until shortly before his death , aged 94 , having refused all state honours , including the Order of Merit in 1946 .   Since Shaw 's death , opinion has varied about his works . He has at times been rated as second only to William Shakespeare among English-language dramatists ; analysts recognise his extensive influence on generations of playwrights . The word `` Shavian '' has entered the language as encapsulating Shaw 's ideas and his means of expressing them .