2014 paperback edition. Written in 1895, George Bernard Shaw's "Sanity of Art" essay is a response to Max Nordau's 1892 book, "Degeneration," which criticized fin de siecle modernist trends by suggesting its practitioners were irrational, amoral, and possibly even insane with neurasthenia. Eschewing conventional morality, Shaw advocates for the right of individuals to decide for themselves the saneness of the maniacal geniuses cultivating the new aesthetic. Cover illustration by James Abbott McNeill Whistler."

Cashel Byron's Profession is George Bernard Shaw's fourth novel. The novel was written in 1882 and after rejection by several publishers it was published in serialized form in a socialist magazine. The novel was later published as a book in England and the United States. Shaw wrote five novels early in his career and then abandoned them to pursue politics, drama criticism and eventually play writing. The Admirable Bashville (1901), a short play based loosely on this novel, was written to protect American copyrights after the novel became unexpectedly successful in the United States.

This is a special edition of George Bernard Shaw's celebrated plays, Pygmalion and Arms and the Man. Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence....

In Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw spins out the drama of an eccentric millionaire, a ro-mantic poet, and a misguided savior of souls, Major Barbara herself, in a topsy-turvy master-piece of sophisticated banter and urbane humor. His brilliant dialogue, combined with his use of paradox and socialist theory, never fails to tickle, entertain-and challenge. George Bernard Shaw was the greatest British dramatist after Shakespeare, a satirist equal to Jonathan Swift, and a playwright whose most profound gift was his ability to make audiences think by provoking them to laughter.

'Caesar and Cleopatra', a cheeky riposte to Shakespeare, redefines heroism in the character of the ageing Roman leader.

Shaw believed that theatre audiences of the 1890s deserved more than the hollow spectacle and sham he saw displayed on the London stage. But he also recognized that people wanted to be entertained while educated, and to see purpose mixed with pleasure. Shaw employed traditional dramatic forms - Victorian melodrama, the history play and the adventure story - to turn received wisdom upside down. Set during the American War of Inde-pendence, 'The Devil's Disciple' exposes fake Puritanism and piety.

Shaw believed that theatre audiences of the 1890s deserved more than the hollow spectacle and sham he saw displayed on the London stage. But he also recognized that people wanted to be entertained while educated, and to see purpose mixed with pleasure. In 'Captain Brassbound's Conversion', an expedition in Morocco is saved from disaster by a lady explorer's skilful manipulation of the truth.