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Audiobook edition · 12 h 40 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if we die before we have time to grow wise?
Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah is a cycle of five connected plays that stretches from Eden into the far future. In the Beginning opens with Adam’s unease and Eve’s curiosity. The Serpent urges Eve to imagine what does not yet exist, while Cain brings a hunger for glory into this world of questions about birth, death, and the value of living.
In The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas, clergyman Franklyn and biologist Conrad propose that people could live three hundred years through will. Politicians Lubin and Burge care more about their careers. The Thing Happens carries the question into a future Britain: can longer lives bring wiser government? Shaw uses wit, debate, and strange encounters to test humanity’s capacity to change.
What you’ll discover
- Eden’s restless first people Meet an anxious Adam and a brave Eve as they confront what life could become.
- A theory worth arguing over Follow the Barnabas brothers as they challenge politicians to think beyond votes and appearances.
- Wit against short thinking Enjoy Shaw’s jokes and sharp arguments about lives too brief to nurture wisdom.
- Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman Encounter long-lived people whom the wider world regards with curiosity and turns to for guidance.
- Life reaching beyond itself Explore Shaw’s idea of a Life Force that strives to become more capable.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy plays full of argument and wit, stories that leap across thousands of years, satire of politicians, and big questions about death, evolution and what humans might become.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Blind accident leaves humanity drifting
- Need gives the will creative power
- Death awakens the desire to create
- Certainty and creation pull people apart
- Longer lives could let wisdom grow
- The long lived are already here
- Wisdom looks toward the future
- Youthful pleasures give way to thought
- Human beings remain an unfinished experiment
Who’s who
- AdamThe first man, weary of eternity and afraid of death, who invents tomorrow and binds himself with a vow.
- EveThe first woman, who learns from the serpent that imagination, will and creation can renew life, and who keeps hoping for better things.
- The SerpentA clever, laughing teacher who names birth and life and urges Eve to ask why not.
- Franklyn BarnabasA former clergyman who preaches that people must live three hundred years if civilization is to survive.
- Conrad BarnabasFranklyn's brother, a biologist who believes the change will come when people need it enough.
- SavvyFranklyn's blunt young daughter, who laughs at politicians and listens harder than she admits.
- Mrs LutestringA former parlor maid who becomes the Domestic Minister and who knows what long life costs.
- ZooA girl of fifty-six on the island of oracles who treats a visiting old gentleman as a baby.
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Back to Methuselah
by Bernard Shaw · 1921
Two brothers declare that humans must live three hundred years, a lifespan even the parlor maid might reach.
Medium level5–10 hours to read2 languages
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In short
What does the first man do when he meets death? In Back to Methuselah, Adam stares at a fawn with a broken neck, and a serpent teaches Eve a new word, birth.
Back to Methuselah at a glance
- Reading time
- About 7 h 25 min5 h 55 min fast, 8 h 50 min slow
- Length
- 106,000 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1921by Bernard Shaw
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Shaw blames blind selection for a ruined world
The preface opens with small memories. As a boy in Dublin, Shaw hears a customer ask for the works of the celebrated Buffoon, meaning the naturalist Buffon. These scenes show how ideas travel, half understood and badly named.
Shaw's real target is what he calls Neo-Darwinism. Darwin, he says, was an honest naturalist who described one method, Circumstantial Selection. His followers made it the only method. The world, they said, was made by accident, with no mind and no purpose.
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- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1921
- Language
- English
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Shaw, Bernard. Back to Methuselah. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/back-to-methuselah.
Shaw, B. (2026). Back to Methuselah. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/back-to-methuselah (Original work published 1921)
Shaw, Bernard. Back to Methuselah. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/back-to-methuselah.
@book{shaw2026back,
author = {Shaw, Bernard},
title = {Back to Methuselah},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/back-to-methuselah},
note = {First published 1921}
}
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What is Back to Methuselah about?
It is a cycle of five plays by Bernard Shaw on evolution and long life. It runs from Adam and Eve to the year 31,920, asking what humans might become if they lived hundreds of years.
What does the title Back to Methuselah mean?
Methuselah is the biblical figure said to have lived nearly a thousand years. Shaw uses the name as a slogan, urging people to return to a life span long enough to gain real wisdom.
What is Creative Evolution in this book?
It is Shaw's idea that life changes through purpose and will, not only by blind accident. Living things want to do more, keep trying, and build new abilities, as when a person learns to ride a bicycle.
The author
Bernard Shaw
1856–1950 · Irish playwright and critic
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was an Irish playwright and critic. Born in Dublin, he moved to London in 1876 and later lived in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, where he died. His plays include Arms and the Man (1894), Man and Superman (1903), Major Barbara (1905), and Pygmalion (1912).
More by Bernard Shaw
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