A series of sharply-worded letters which George Bernard Shaw sent to a young writer at the start of his career were bought for £2,530 at Christie's in London yesterday.
Alfred Ridgeway had asked for advice about becoming a writer and sent the playwright one of his stories. It earned a testy response.
"Read my work and don't bother me with this rubbish," Shaw snapped in a note signed GBS in November 1946. It was one of five pieces of correspondence bought by Dublin Tourism, which runs seven visitor attractions in the city.
The letters will go on show between the Dublin Writers Museum and the Shaw Birthplace Museum in Synge Street.
The exchange began in 1942. Ridgeway was 29 and living in north London. Shaw was 88, and at first the tone was friendly. The young man was advised to make the British Museum Reading Room his daily refuge, "as I did for many years and Samuel Butler and Karl Marx did all their lives."
Encouraged, Ridgeway wrote back offering to work without pay, but it earned a stinging rebuke from Shaw. "There is no work you can do for me," he said. "Do not steal another poor man's job by offering to do it for nothing." Two years later Ridgeway sent Shaw one of his stories. Its arrival clearly exasperated the author, who replied: "Please pursue your literary career without bothering me about it.
"Your story is a trifle that may have been written by any amateur. If you have done nothing better since 1942 you had better either try some other job or else by writing 1,000 words a day for five years qualify yourself for writing as a profession."
The advice about constant application to the writer's craft had a sting in the tail. "Meanwhile, don't make a confounded nuisance of yourself by sending yourself to authors instead of to publishers and editors."
Shaw died in 1950. Alfred changed his name to Athelstan and persevered to become a journalist and writer of stories. He began a correspondence course in journalism and founded a school for television writers.