Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, Paperback, 9780141439501 | Buy online at The Nile
Departments
 Free Returns*

Pygmalion

a Romance in Five Acts

Author: George Bernard Shaw and Nicholas Grene   Series: Penguin Classics

Paperback

Shaw's dramatization of a Cockney flower girl's metamorphosis into a lady is both a fantasy and a platform for his views on social class, money and women's independence.

Read more
Save
23%
RRP $22.99
$17.70
Or pay later with
Check delivery options
Paperback

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

Shaw's dramatization of a Cockney flower girl's metamorphosis into a lady is both a fantasy and a platform for his views on social class, money and women's independence.

Read more

Description

Pygmalion both delighted and scandalized its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw's feminist views. In Shaw's hands, the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in polite society. The one thing he overlooks is that his 'creation' has a mind of her own.

Read more

Critic Reviews

“By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature”



“[Shaw] did his best in redressing the fateful unbalance between truth and reality, in lifting mankind to a higher rung of social maturity. He often pointed a scornful finger at human frailty, but his jests were never at the expense of humanity.” —Thomas Mann
 
“Shaw will not allow complacency; he hates second-hand opinions; he attacks fashion; he continually challenges and unsettles, questioning and provoking us even when he is making us laugh. And he is still at it. No cliché or truism of contemporary life is safe from him.” —Michael Holroyd
 
“In his works Shaw left us his mind. . . . Today we have no Shavian wizard to awaken us with clarity and paradox, and the loss to our national intelligence is immense.”The Sunday Times
 
“He was a Tolstoy with jokes, a modern Dr. Johnson, a universal genius who on his own modest reckoning put even Shakespeare in the shade.” The Independent
 
“His plays were superb exercises in high-level argument on every issue under the sun, from feminism and God, to war and eternity, but they were also hits—and still are.” —The Daily Mail

Read more

About the Author

Dublin-born George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was an active Socialist and a brilliant platform speaker. He was strongly critical of London theatre and closely associated with the intellectual revival of British drama.Dan H. Laurence has edited Shaw's COLLECTED LETTERS and COLLECTED PLAYS with their Prefaces. He was Literary Advisor to the Shaw Estate until his retirement in 1990.Nicholas Grene is Professor of English at the University of Dublin.

Read more

Product Details

Publisher
Penguin Books Ltd | Penguin Classics
Published
30th January 2003
Pages
144
ISBN
9780141439501

Returns

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.

Save
23%
RRP $22.99
$17.70
Or pay later with
Check delivery options