Abbey Theatre works by Seumas O'Cuisin, Fred Ryan and Yeats. The third base was the financial support and experience of Annie Horniman, a middle-class Englishwoman with previous experience of theatre production, having been involved in the presentation of George Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man" in London in 1894. An acquaintance of Yeats from London circles, including the Order of the Golden Dawn, she came to Dublin in 1903 to act as Yeats' unpaid secretary and to make costumes for a production of his play "The King's Threshold". Her money helped found the Abbey Theatre and, according to the critic Adrian Frazier,
George Bernard Shaw declared, be the means of eradicating smallpox and other infectious diseases. Less contentiously, Shaw was keenly interested in transport; Laurence observed in 1992 a need for a published study of Shaw's interest in "bicycling, motorbikes, automobiles, and planes, climaxing in his joining the Interplanetary Society in his nineties". Shaw published articles on travel, took photographs of his journeys, and submitted notes to the Royal Automobile Club. Shaw strove throughout his adult life to be referred to as "Bernard Shaw" rather than "George Bernard Shaw", but confused matters by continuing to use his full initials—G.B.S.—as a by-line, and often signed himself