THE IRRATIONAL KNOT

BY BERNARD SHAW BEING

THE SECOND NOVEL
OF HIS NONAGE


1905




PREFACE

TO THE AMERICAN EDITION OF 1905


This novel was written in the year 1880, only a few years after I had
exported myself from Dublin to London in a condition of extreme rawness
and inexperience concerning the specifically English side of the life
with which the book pretends to deal. Everybody wrote novels then. It
was my second attempt; and it shared the fate of my first. That is to
say, nobody would publish it, though I tried all the London publishers
and some American ones. And I should not greatly blame them if I could
feel sure that it was the book's faults and not its qualities that
repelled them.

I have narrated elsewhere how in the course of time the rejected MS.
became Mrs. Annie Besant's excuse for lending me her ever helping hand