CHESTNUT HILL, MA.- The first-ever public exhibition of selections from the internationally-noted George Bernard Shaw Collection of Boston College's Burns Library is on view now through April 2005. Titled "Mr. Shaw's Time Is Filled Up for Months to Come" -- a nod to a quotation from one of the pre-printed post cards Shaw used to reply to his many correspondents -- the exclusive exhibit is drawn from the Burns Library archive that has been deemed one of the world's most important collections of material related to the Anglo-Irish comic dramatist George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature and regarded as one of the greatest playwrights of the modern era for such works as Major Barbara, Pygmalion and Saint Joan. The collection was acquired by Boston College in 2002 from private collector Samuel N. Freedman, a rare books and manuscripts dealer.

"This is considered by many to have been the finest Shaw collection in private hands," said Boston College Burns Librarian Robert O'Neill. It represents a significant addition to the Boston College Irish Collection, already considered to be the premier, most comprehensive repository of Irish research materials in the United States.

Specifically, the collection encompasses approximately 3,000 books and other printed items, including many pamphlets written by Shaw on all the controversial subjects of his day: education, war and peace, socialism, every aspect of economics, relations between England and Ireland, and the like, according to exhibit principal curator David Horn. The collection also holds more than 400 other items, among them portraits, photographs, programs, posters, playbills, letters and notes.

The exhibit is comprised of a striking array of items, including priceless original manuscripts, first editions and signed books, letters, photographs, programs, playbills and paintings.