Autograph letter signed.

Small 8vo. 3 pp. on bifolium. A sincere letter to "Bert" in which Shaw gives advice to a young man and discusses his own youth and career in an amusing manner: "I understand quite well the difficulty you are in - I have been in it myself. When I was fifteen, I did what everybody will tell you was the manly, right, independent thing to do: that is, I went into an office to spare the family finances and support myself by my own exertions. Result, a waste of four or five years [.]". After he "gave up this dutiful tomfoolery", it took him nine years to launch his career as a journalist: "Those nine years were my apprenticeship: I did a lot of work in them - wrote five novels and dozens of articles, lectured & ranted, and picked up all sorts of efficiencies; but I had no gleam of success". He returns to how he wasted his time as a clerk: "I have no doubt whatever that I brought this on myself to a great extent by fooling away my time as a clerk for from £18 to £72 a year in a Dublin office when I should have been equipping myself for serious work [.]". Shaw ends his letter with advice: "[.] after all there is money enough left to make it idiotically false economy to make a clerk of you. If it were a question of apprenticing you as a carpenter or mason, with a view to your becoming an architect & builder, I should heartily approve; but put the city & its dungeons out of your head." - Horizontal fold, minor stains, browning, close tears along the folds.