ALS signed “G. Bernard Shaw,” one page, 9 x 11.25, April 30, 1912, penned at the close of a circular from Dagen Nyheter eliciting opinions of August Strindberg's role in European culture, to be published in the event of his death; the circular was dispatched following news that the playwright was suffering from stomach cancer. Shaw's response, in full: "Strindberg is a very great dramatist: he and Ibsen have made Sweden and Norway the dramatic centre of the world; but he will die peacefully and painlessly of extreme old age forty years hence. Cancer of the stomach killed Napoleon, and is therefore regarded as the only weapon powerful enough to prevail against Strindberg; but the alarm has been given too often to be taken seriously now. Time may wear him out; but Death will not succeed in murdering him." In good to very good condition, with moderately heavy overall creasing, edge tears, soiling, and staining.
Shaw's good faith in Strindberg's health proved to be in vain as the great Swedish scribed died roughly two weeks later on May 14, 1912. In 1926, however, when Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature he was able to pay a more tangible tribute to Strindberg's memory. All of the money given with his award was used to finance a society for making Swedish literature available in English. The first translation produced by the thus-formed Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation was a volume of four of Strindberg's plays.
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