Editing Shavian alphabet (section)

== History ==
[[Image:Androcles and the Lion Shaw Alphabet Edition.png|right|thumb|200px|Libraries were furnished with free hardcover copies of ''[[Androcles and the Lion (play)|Androcles and the Lion]]: Shaw Alphabet Edition'', 1962. Cover design by Germano Facetti]]

[[George Bernard Shaw]], the writer, critic and playwright, was a vocal critic of English spelling because it often deviates from the [[alphabetic principle]]. Shaw had served from 1926 to 1939 on the [[BBC]]'s [[BBC Advisory Committee on Spoken English|Advisory Committee on Spoken English]], which included several exponents of phonetic writing. He also knew [[Henry Sweet]], creator of [[Current Shorthand]] (and a prototype for the character of [[Pygmalion (play)|Henry Higgins]]), although Shaw himself for years wrote his literary works in [[Pitman shorthand]]. However, he found its limitations frustrating as well and realized that it was not a suitable replacement for traditional orthography, making the production of printed material difficult and impossible to type. Shaw desired and advocated a phonetic [[spelling reform]], and this called for a new alphabet.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.54583/page/n9/mode/2up|title=The Miraculous Birth of Language|last=Wilson|first=Richard Albert|publisher=JM Dent and Sons Ltd.|year=1941|isbn=|location=London, England|pages=ix-xxxvii}}</ref>

All of his interest in spelling and alphabet reform was made clear in Shaw's will of June 1950, in which provision was made for (Isaac) [[James Pitman]], with a [[grant in aid]] from the Public Trustee, to establish a Shaw Alphabet. Following Shaw's death in November 1950, and after some legal dispute, the Trustee announced a worldwide competition to design such an alphabet, with the aim of producing a system that would be an economical way of writing and of printing the English language. a contest for the design of the new alphabet was won by four people, including [[Ronald Kingsley Read]] who had corresponded extensively with Shaw for several years regarding such an alphabet. Read was then appointed to amalgamate the four designs to produce the new alphabet.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/AndroclesAndTheLion_ShawAlphabetEdition|title=The Shaw Alphabet Edition of Androcles and the Lion|last=Shaw|first=Bernard|publisher=Penguin Books Ltd.|year=1962|isbn=|location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England|pages=9–11}}</ref>

Due to the contestation of Shaw's will, the trust charged with developing the new alphabet could afford to publish only one book: a version of Shaw's play ''[[Androcles and the Lion (play)|Androcles and the Lion]]'', in a bi-alphabetic edition with both conventional and Shavian spellings (1962 Penguin Books, London). Copies were sent to major libraries in English-speaking countries.