In The Search for Love biographer Michael Holroyd takes Shaw from his birth in 1856, through a series of poignant and tantalizing love affairs, to his marriage in 1898. Holroyd counterpoints the private and public Shaw with humor, compassion and originality. Listening to the subtle mind behind Shaw's laughter and divesting Shaw of his pantomime clothing, he reveals the man who orphaned himself from his parents to become the child of his own writings.