This reissue makes available one of the early works of George Bernard Shaw: a galloping, witty novel with a wealth of pertinent things to say about the creaking class system and men’s and women’s attempts to find a human and interesting way to live together. The book was written in 1883 and later revised by Shaw for inclusion in the 1932 Standard Edition, from which the present text is taken.

From 1879 to 1883, before he turned to writing plays, Shaw wrote five novels. An Unsocial Socialist, the last written, concerns the activities of one Sidney Trefusis, a rich Marxist whom women find completely exasperating, or irresistible, or both, and who has definite ideas about reforming personal and political relationships. Shaw develops a plot that overturns the pieties of the middle class—including the expectations of the novel-reader—and in so doing suggests some new structures for both society and literature.