Shaw began writing MAN AND SUPERMAN in 1901 and determined to write a play that would encapsulate the new century's intellectual inheritance. Shaw drew not only on Byron's verse satire, but also on Shakespeare, the Victorian comedy fashionable in his early life, and from authors from Conan Doyle to Kipling. In this powerful drama of ideas, Shaw explores the role of the artist, the function of women in society, and his theory of Creative Evolution. As Stanley Weintraub says in his new introduction, this is "the first great twentieth-century English play" and remains a classic expose of the...

One of Bernard Shaw's most glittering comedies, Arms and the Man is a burlesque of Victorian attitudes to heroism, war and empire. In the contrast between Bluntschli, the mercenary soldier, and the brave leader, Sergius, the true nature of valour is revealed. Shaw mocks deluded idealism in Candida, when a young poet becomes infatuated with the wife of a Socialist preacher. The Man of Destiny is a witty war of words between Napoleon and a 'strange lady', while in the exuberant farce You Never Can Tell a divided family is reunited by chance. Although Shaw intended Plays Pleasant to be gentler...

Tells the tale of Androcles, a slave who is saved by the requited mercy of a lion.

When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth, Bernard Shaw wrote. Through a long and brilliant career as a playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist, among other roles, his ability to reveal life's truth through humour estabished him as one of the most quoted writers in the English language.

Introduction by George Bernard Shaw

Pip, a poor orphan being raised by a cruel sister, does not have much in the way of great expectations--until he is inexplicably elevated to wealth by an anonymous benefactor. Full of unforgettable characters--including a terrifying convict named Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Havisham, and her beautiful but manipulative niece, Estella, Great Expectations is a tale of intrigue, unattainable love, and all of the happiness money can't buy. "Great Expectations has the most wonderful and most perfectly worked-out plot for a novel in the...

This reissue makes available one of the early works of George Bernard Shaw: a galloping, witty novel with a wealth of pertinent things to say about the creaking class system and men's and women's attempts to find a human and interesting way to live together. The book was written in 1883 and later revised by Shaw for inclusion in the 1932 Standard Edition, from which the present text is taken.

The ancient Greeks tell the legend of the sculptor Pygmalion, who created a statue of a woman of such surpassing beauty that he fell in love with his own creation. Then, Aphrodite, taking pity on this man whose love could not reach beyond the barrier of stone, brought the statue to life and gave her to Pygmalion as his bride.

Centuries later, George Bernard Shaw captured the magic of this legend in his celebrated romantic play, Pygmalion. Pygmalion became Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, his statue an untutored flower girl from the streets of London, and the barrier between...

Enduring Literature Illuminated by Practical Scholarship
An idealistic professor transforms an unsophisticated Cockney girl into a refined young lady in this classic drama set in turn-of-the-century London.
This Enriched Classic Edition includes:
• A concise introduction that gives readers important background information
• A chronology of the author's life and work
• A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
• An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations
...

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Childhood is a stage in the process of that continual remanufacture of the Life Stuff by which the human race is perpetuated. The Life Force either will not or cannot achieve immortality except in very low organisms: indeed it is by no means ascertained that even the amoeba is immortal. Human beings visibly wear out, though they last longer than their friends the dogs. Turtles, parrots, and elephants are believed to be capable of...