Autograph Post Card Signed, to "Wm. Earl Hodgson Jr.

1901. Text on one side of a post card imprinted with the address "10, Adelphi Terrace, W.C." Dated by hand "11th January 1901". Address on other side also written by Shaw (The Anglo-Saxon Review | 35 Great Cumberland Place W., altered by someone else to 127, Cambridge St. | Warwick Sq. S.W.)

The text of this card reads as follows: I am afraid I shall not be able to manage it this quarter. There is a forest of belated work to be cut through just now. Don't depend on me. [signed] G. Bernard Shaw. This correspondence has to do with The Anglo-Saxon Review -- a short-lived "quarterly miscellany," created and edited by Lady Randolph Churchill (her son Winston served as an advisor), published by John Lane in handsome leather-bound volumes with elaborate gilt tooling. The new periodical sent out an appeal for original material to many prominent British and American authors; contributors included Henry James, Winston Churchill, George Gissing, Stephen Crane -- and George Bernard Shaw. The subscription list included many from the wealthy, the nobility, even heads of state. But maybe it was all a bit too much -- for there were only ten quarterly issues, from June 1899 to September 1901. (While Lady Churchill was volunteering on the hospital ship Maine during the Boer War, Sidney Low and Earl Hodgson managed publication.) Lady Churchill and other members of the editorial team had appealed to noted writers of the day for literary and artistic contributions. Although George Bernard Shaw is here declining to submit "this quarter," there was in fact a nine-page piece of his, "A Word More about Verdi," that appeared in the next (eighth) issue of March 1901. The card is in fine condition, with a clear example of Shaw's signature. Provenance: from the renowned three-generation Dodge Family Autograph Collection.