[Wagner, Richard. (1813–1883)] Shaw, George Bernard. (1856–1950). The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Ring of the Niblungs - SIGNED FIRST EDITION. London: Grant Richards. [1898]. First edition. Signed and inscribed later [London, 23 May 1930] on the half-title page: "Dear Mrs. Malcolm, Yes: this is a first edition. There was / no previous publication in any form." Small 8vo, 140 pp. Cloth. Two bookplates, hinge at half-title cracked, else fine. Housed in a custom clam shell box.



Shaw's philosophical commentary on Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, was offered to those enthusiastic admirers of Wagner who "were unable to follow his ideas, and do not in the least understand the dilemma of Wotan." According to Shaw:"I write this pamphlet for the assistance of those who wish to be introduced to the work on equal terms with that inner circle of adepts...The reason is that its dramatic moments lie quite outside the consciousness of people whose joys and sorrows are all domestic and personal, and whose religions and political ideas are purely conventional and superstitious. To them it is a struggle between half a dozen fairytale personages for a ring, involving hours of scolding and cheating, and one long scene in a dark gruesome mine, with gloomy, ugly music, and not a glimpse of a handsome young man or pretty woman. Only those of wider consciousness can follow it breathlessly, seeing in it the whole tragedy of human history and the whole horror of the dilemmas from which the world is shrinking today."



Shaw later noted of this first edition that "there is an uncorrected blunder even in the title, where the Niblung's Ring is called the Ring of the Niblungs. My knowledge of German was apparently pure impressionism. Political changes obliged me to add several prefaces to later editions; and the final chapters obsolesced rapidly and had to be rewritten."