An Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. He was also an essayist, novelist and short story writer. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems with a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Issues which engaged Shaw's attention included education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.
He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Academy Award (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (an adaptation of his play of the same name), respectively. Shaw refused all other awards and honours, including the offer of a knighthood.
Contents
Arms and the Man (1898)
Mrs. Warren's Profession (1894)
Caesar and Cleopatra (1901)
Heartbreak House (1919)
You Never Can Tell (1898)
The Doctor's Dilemma (1906)
Getting Married (1908)
Candida (1898)
Misalliance (1910)
The Devil's Disciple (1897)
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets (1910)
Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (1921)
The Man of Destiny (1898)
On the Prospects of Christianity (1912)
How He Lied to Her Husband (1904)
John Bull's Other Island (1904)
The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring (1923)
Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
Pygmalion (1914)
Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy (1903)
Major Barbara (1905)
The Philanderer (1898)
Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
Androcles and the Lion (1912)
An Unsocial Socialist (1883)
Fanny's First Play (1911)
Great Catherine (1913)
Overruled (1912)
Heartbreak House (1919)-
On the eve of the First World War Ms Ellie Dunn, her father and her fiancé are invited to one of Hesione Hushabye's infamous dinner parties. Unfortunately, her fiancé is a scoundrel, her father's a bumbling prig, and she's actually in love with Hector, Hesione's husband. This bold mix of farce and tragedy lampoons British society as it blithely sinks towards disaster.
Pygmalion-
The story of Professor Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, who wagers that he can turn a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into the toast of London society merely by teaching her how to speak with an upper-class accent. In the process, he becomes fond of her and attempts to direct her future, but she rejects his domineering ways and marries a young but poor man of the genteel class, Freddy.
