Author(s): George Bernard Shaw

Fiction

An Unsocial Socialist was published in 1887, having been written in 1883.The hero, Sidney Trefusis, otherwise Jeff Smilash, is a gentleman by birth and education who is ashamed of his origin. He is in sympathy with the toiling masses, and he makes himself as much like them as he can by putting on workman's clothes and living in a small cottage as a kind of Jack-of-all-trades. He adopts what he supposes to be the workman's manners with the exaggeration which commonly characterises all assumptions of this nature. He extends his study even to the domain of morals, and pretends to be a very low fellow indeed. To clear the scene for his stage-play, he has got rid of his very charming wife, on no other ground than that he is tired of her, and of love, and of a married life.