George Bernard Shaw Books In Order

Collections

  1. Plays Pleasant (1898)
  2. Plays Unpleasant (1898)
  3. Three Plays for Puritans (1901)
  4. The Doctor’s Dilemma, Getting Married, and the Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet (1928)
  5. The Black Girl in Search of God (1946)
  6. Four Plays (1953)
  7. Pygmalion and Three Other Plays (1960)
  8. Pygmalion and My Fair Lady (1975)
  9. Plays by George Bernard Shaw (1979)
  10. Plays by George Bernard Shaw: Mrs Warren’s Profession- Arms and the Man- Candida- Man and Superm (1979)
  11. Plays Extravagant (1981)
  12. Selected Short Plays (1988)
  13. Heartbreak House and Misalliance (1995)
  14. George Bernard Shaw: Selected Plays (1996)
  15. Plays Political (1999)
  16. Man and Superman and Three Other Plays (2003)

Plays

  1. Cashel Byron’s Profession (1882)
  2. An Unsocial Socialist (1883)
  3. Arms and the Man (1894)
  4. Candida (1897)
  5. The Devil’s Disciple (1897)
  6. Man of Destiny (1897)
  7. The Philanderer (1898)
  8. You Never Can Tell (1899)
  9. Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (1900)
  10. Caesar and Cleopatra (1901)
  11. Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1902)
  12. John Bull’s Other Island (1904)
  13. Major Barbara (1905)
  14. Man and Superman (1905)
  15. The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906)
  16. Getting Married (1908)
  17. Misalliance (1910)
  18. Androcles and the Lion (1912)
  19. Overruled (1912)
  20. Pygmalion (1913)
  21. Heartbreak House (1920)
  22. The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet (1920)
  23. Back to Methuselah (1922)
  24. Saint Joan (1923)
  25. The Apple Cart (1929)
  26. Nine Answers (1988)
  27. Last Line of Defense (1999)
  28. Annajanska (2004)

Non fiction

  1. The Perfect Wagnerite (1898)
  2. Love Among the Artists (1900)
  3. On Going to Church (1905)
  4. The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism (1928)
  5. Major Critical Essays: The Quintessence of Ibsenism, the Perfect Wagnerite, the Sanity of Art (1932)
  6. Shaw on Shakespeare (1961)
  7. On Language (1970)
  8. Shaw’s Music (1981)
  9. Bernard Shaw Collected Letters: 1874-1897 (1985)
  10. Bernard Shaw Collected Letters: 1898-1910 (1985)
  11. Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters (1985)
  12. Dear Mr. Shaw (1987)
  13. Selected Nondramatic Writings of Bernard Shaw (1990)
  14. The Complete Prefaces: 1889-1913 v. 1 (1993)
  15. The Complete Prefaces: 1914-29 v. 2 (1995)
  16. The Sayings of George Bernard Shaw (1995)
  17. Complete Prefaces: 1930-50 v. 3 (1997)
  18. Not Bloody Likely: and Other Quotations from Bernard Shaw (1997)
  19. Shaw V. Chesterton (2000)
  20. Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell (2002)
  21. Preface to Androcles and the Lion: On the Prospects of Christianity (2002)
  22. A Treatise on Parents and Children (2002)
  23. The Wit and Wisdom of George Bernard Shaw (2010)

Collections Book Covers

Plays Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

George Bernard Shaw Books Overview

Plays Pleasant

Plays Pleasant 1898 comprises four comedies intended to amuse audiences but also to provoke them. Arms and the Man, set in the Balkan mountains, satirizes the romantic view of war and military heroism. Candida presents the complicated relationship between a vicar, his wife, and her young admirer. You Never Can Tell is a light, witty look at an aging suffragette and her family. The Man of Destiny features Napoleon Bonaparte at odds with English mores.

Plays Unpleasant

With the plays in this 1898 collection Widower’s Houses, The Philanderer, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession Shaw challenges his audiences’ moral complacency in the face of serious social problems and inequities.

Three Plays for Puritans

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 these three plays of ideas, 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 Independence, ‘The Devil’s Disciple’ exposes fake Puritanism and piety, while ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’, a cheeky riposte to Shakespeare, redefines heroism in the character of the ageing Roman leader. And in Captain Brassbound’s ‘Conversion’, an expedition in Morocco is saved from disaster by a lady explorer’s skilful manipulation of the truth.

The Doctor’s Dilemma, Getting Married, and the Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet

George Bernard Shaw 1856 1950 won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and was one of the great literary minds of his day, in addition to being one of its most entertaining personalities. In his youth he became an ardent socialist and wrote five novels, which are still very entertaining, although Shaw truly found his creative identity on the stage and lectern. While he was a great dramatist, it is possible to argue that Shaw’s prefaces are better than his plays. Certainly they are masterful expositions of his ideas, and among the finest essays in English. If there is one defining virtue in Shaw, it is his ability to ask awkward questions. He was not someone who accepted the status quo; instead he spent the whole of his very long life in search of something better, as wit, critic, curmudgeon, and revolutionary. Among his greatest plays are CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA, MAN AND SUPERMAN, BACK TO METHUSELAH, SAINT JOAN, MAJORA BARBARA, PYGMALION the basis for the musical and film MY FAIR LADY, and ANDROCLES AND THE LION. He wrote voluminously on social and political issues. His THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN’S GUIDE TO SOCIALISM 1928 was enormously popular at the time. He continued to publish until nearly the end of his life. Among his last works are SIXTEEN SELF SKETCHES 1948, BOUYANT BILLIONS 1948 and FAR FETCHED FABLES 1950.

The Black Girl in Search of God

So controversial was Black Girl when it first appeared in 1932 that it provoked public outcry with Shaw decried as a blasphemer. Today, it remains a surprisingly irreverent depiction of the universal search for God. Dissatisfied with the teachings of respectable white missionaries, an African girl embarks upon her own quest for God and Truth. Journeying through the forest, she encounters various religious figures, each one seeking to convert her to their own brand of faith. This brilliantly sardonic allegory showcases some of Shaw’s most unorthodox thoughts on religion and race. George Bernard Shaw 1856 1950 is best known for his dramatic works, of which Pygmalion is the most famous.

Pygmalion and Three Other Plays

Pygmalion and Three Other Plays, by George Bernard Shaw, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences biographical, historical, and literary to enrich each reader’s understanding of these enduring works. Hailed as a Tolstoy with jokes by one critic, George Bernard Shaw was the most significant British playwright since the seventeenth century. Pygmalion persists as his best loved play, one made into both a classic film which won Shaw an Academy Award for best screenplay and the perennially popular musical My Fair Lady. Pygmalion follows the adventures of phonetics professor Henry Higgins as he attempts to transform cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a refined lady. The scene in which Eliza appears in high society with the correct accent but no notion of polite conversation is considered one of the funniest in English drama. Like most of Shaw’s work, Pygmalion wins over audiences with wit, a taut morality, and an innate understanding of human relationships. This volume also includes Major Barbara, which attacks both capitalism and charitable organizations, The Doctor s Dilemma, a keen eyed examination of medical morals and malpractice, and Heartbreak House, which exposes the spiritual bankruptcy of the generation responsible for the bloodshed of World War I. John A. Bertolini is Ellis Professor of the Liberal Arts at Middlebury College, where he teaches dramatic literature, Shakespeare, and film. He has written The Playwrighting Self of Bernard Shaw and articles on Hitchcock, and British and American dramatists. Bertolini also wrote the introduction and notes to the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Shaw s Man and Superman and Three Other Plays.

Pygmalion and My Fair Lady

Based upon the Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion who fell in love with his own statue of a woman, George Bernard Shaw’s celebrated play and the musical adaptation by Alan Jay Lerner feature phonetics professor Henry Higgins who transformed cockney flower girl Eliza into a lady.

Plays by George Bernard Shaw: Mrs Warren’s Profession- Arms and the Man- Candida- Man and Superm

In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, Candida, and Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw satirizes society, military heroism, marriage, and the pursuit of man by woman. From a social, literary, and theatrical standpoint, these four plays are among the foremost dramas of the age as intellectually stimulating as they are humorous.

Plays Extravagant

This is a collection of the plays of George Bernard Shaw that includes ‘The Millionairess’, ‘Too True to be Good’ and ‘The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles’.

Selected Short Plays

This selection comprises: ‘The Admirable Bashville’, ‘How He Lied To Her Husband’, ‘Passion, Poison and Petrifaction’, ‘The Glimpse of Reality’, ‘The Dark Lady of the Sonnets’, ‘Overruled’, ‘The Music Cure’, ‘Great Catherine’, ‘The Inca of Perusalem’. ‘O’Flaherty V.C.’, ‘Augustus Does His Bit’, ‘Annajanska, The Bolshevik Empress’, ‘Village Wooing’, ‘The Six of Calais’, and ‘Cymbeline Refinished’.

Heartbreak House and Misalliance

In Heartbreak House, a visit to an eccentric gentleman’s home reveals surprises in gender and identity, while in Misalliance, an underwear tycoon and his daughter find adventure after a plane crash. Reissue.

George Bernard Shaw: Selected Plays

The complete texts of works by the distinguished playwright includes such classic theatrical plays as Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, Pygmalion, Major Barbara, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Androcles and the Lion.

Plays Political

While some of Shaw’s earlier plays are still performed, his later plays, such as the ones in this volume, are barely known. As the collective title indicates, the themes here are political; yet, frankly, it is doubtful how seriously we can now take Shaw as a political thinker. Despite writing in the 1930s, he has little to say of the nature of totalitarianism: although he satirises Fascist dictators in ‘Geneva’, the satire is disappointingly mild. Neither did Shaw appear to foresee on the evidence of these plays, at least the imminent collapse of the British Empire. But it is Shaw the dramatist rather than Shaw the political philosopher who still holds our attention even in plays as explicitly political as these. He had a sharp intellect and a quirky sense of humour, and his dialogue still glints and sparkles: he couldn’t write a dull line if he tried. No matter how serious the themes he addresses, the crispness of his writing and his lightness of touch still scintillate. Shaw seems, perhaps unfairly, out of fashion nowadays. But even in these lesser known works, he demonstrates his matchless ability, still undimmed, to provoke and to entertain.

Man and Superman and Three Other Plays

Man and Superman and Three Other Plays, by George Bernard Shaw, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences biographical, historical, and literary to enrich each reader’s understanding of these enduring works. Acclaimed as a second Shakespeare, Irish born George Bernard Shaw revolutionized the British theater. Although his plays focus on ideas and issues, they are enlivened by fascinating characters, a brilliant command of language, and dazzling wit. One of Shaw’s finest and most devilish comedies, Man and Superman portrays Don Juan as the quarry instead of the huntsman. John Tanner, upon discovering that his beautiful ward plans to marry him, flees to the Sierra Nevada mountain range, where he is captured by a group of rebels. Tanner falls asleep, and dreams the famous Don Juan in Hell sequence, which features a sparkling Shavian debate among Don Juan, the Devil, and a talkative statue. With its fairy tale ending and a cast literally from hell, Man and Superman is a hilarious cocktail of farce, Nietzschean philosophy, and Mozart s Don Giovanni. Also included in this volume are Candida, Shaw s first real success on the stage, Mrs. Warren s Profession, which poked fun at the Victorian attitude toward prostitution, and The Devil s Disciple, a play set during the American Revolution. John A. Bertolini is Ellis Professor of the Liberal Arts at Middlebury College, where he teaches dramatic literature, Shakespeare, and film. He has written The Playwrighting Self of Bernard Shaw and articles on Hitchcock and on British and American dramatists. Bertolini also wrote the introduction and notes to the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Shaw s Pygmalion and Three Other Plays.

Cashel Byron’s Profession

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. Before becoming a playwright he wrote music and literary criticism. Shaw used his writing to attack social problems such as education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. Shaw was particularly conscious of the exploitation of the working class. From Wikipedia,’ The novel follows Cashel Byron, a world champion prizefighter, as he tries to woo wealthy aristocrat Lydia Carew without revealing his illegal profession. Lydia is portrayed as moral and intelligent woman although ‘priggish’ according to Shaw and is constantly contrasted with the ‘ruffian’ Cashel. Lydia was advised by her recently deceased father to find a husband with a profession, as opposed to an idle gentleman or an art critic like her father. Cashel’s childhood ends when he runs away from school to Australia and becomes apprentice to an ex world champion boxer. When Cashel goes to England to secure his world title in that country he meets Lydia at her country manor. After much miscommunication and drawing room comedy, Cashel gives up boxing and succeeds in marrying Lydia.’

An Unsocial Socialist

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million books. com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and competition ’11 soon bring you down from a shilling to sixpence, let alone ninepence. That’s the way wages goes down and deathrates goes up, worse luck for the likes of hus, as has to sell ourselves like pigs in the market.’ He was about to continue, when the policeman took him by the arm ; turned him towards the gate ; and pointed expressively in that direction. Smilash looked vacantly at him for a moment. Then with a wink at Fairholme, he walked gravely away, amid general staring and silence. ‘ CHAPTER V. What had passed between Smilash and Henrietta remained unknown except to themselves. Agatha had seen Henrietta clasping his neck in her arms, but had not waited to hear the exclamation of’ Sidney, Sidney,’ which followed, nor to see him press her face to his breast in his anxiety to stifle her voice as he said, ‘ My darling love, dont screech, I implore you. Confound it, we shall have the whole pack here in a moment. Hush ! ‘ ‘ Dont leave me again, Sidney,’ she entreated, clinging faster to him as his perplexed gaze, wandering towards the entrance to the shrubbery, seemed to forsake her. A din of voices in that direction precipitated his irresolution. ‘ We must run away, Hetty,’ he said. ‘ Hold fast about my neck ; and dont strangle me. Now then.’ He lifted her upon his shoulder, and ran swiftly through the grounds. When they were stopped by the wall, he placed her atop of it; scrambled over; and made her jump into his arms. Then he staggered away with her across the fields, gasping out, in reply to the inarticulate remonstrances which burst from her as he stumbled and reeled at every hillock, ‘ Your weight is increasing at the rate of a stone a second, my love. If you stoop you will break my back. Oh Lord, here’s a ditch ! ‘ ‘ Let me down,’ screamed Henri…

Arms and the Man

In this promptbook for Arms and the Man a composite of notes from four productions directed either wholly or principally by Bernard Shaw Bernard F. Dukore adds another dimension to the Irishman known primarily as a playwright, wit, and critic. Shaw, according to Dukore, consistently maintained that directing plays is as crucial a part of a dramatist’s profession as writing them. He took his role as director quite seriously, ex erting almost total control over the production. He cast his own plays, directed them, and even advised on such production mat ters as lights, music, the use of stage machinery, and the type and placement of props. When German director Max Reinhardt made an unauthorized cut in one of Shaw s plays, Shaw pro tested: May the soul of Reinhardt scream through all eternity in boiling brimstone! The core of this book comes from the production notes of the 1894 premier of Arms and the Man, but notes from the 1907, 1911, and 1919 performances are included as well. Dukore has made this a composite promptbook rather than a record of a single performance for two reasons: no clear evidence enables him to determine which production the comments pertain to; and Shaw s interpretation of the play did not change over the years, although he did refine certain aspects. Dukore describes his text and his method of arriving at it: The directorial comments that face the text derive chiefly from Shaw s rehearsal notes In addition, I have employed sketches and notes for blocking, copied from Shaw s markings in the margins of the l905 and 1908 printings of the play ; extracts from Shaw s letters to Alma Murray and Lillah MacCarthy, the Rainas of the 1894 and 1907 productions, respectively; and the undated Instructions to Producer of Arms and the Man. The let ters and instructions are identified when they appear. Cast lists, with credits for director and designer where known, of these three productions and of the 1919 production follow. The play text Dukore used is the second revised printing of volume 1 of the Bodley Head edition of Shaw s plays 1979. This is the second volume of a Special Issue series published in cooperation with the American Society for Theatre Research. The first was Edward Gordon Craig and The Pretenders : A Produc tion Revisited by Frederick J. Marker and Lise Lone Marker.

Candida

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG A fine October morning in the north east suburbs of London, a vast district many miles away from the London of Mayfair and St. James’s, much less known there than the Paris of the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysees, and much less narrow, squalid, fetid and airless in its slums; strong in comfortable, prosperous middle class life; wide streeted, myriad populated; well served with ugly iron urinals, Radical clubs, tram lines, and a perpetual stream of yellow cars; enjoying in its main thoroughfares the luxury of grass grown ‘front gardens,’ untrodden by the foot of man save as to the path from the gate to the hall door; but blighted by an intolerable monotony of miles and miles of graceless, characterless brick houses, black iron railings, stony pavements, slaty roofs, and respectably ill dressed or disreputably poorly dressed people, quite accustomed to the place, and mostly plodding about somebody else’s work, which they would not do if they themselves could help it. The little energy and eagerness that crop up show themselves in cockney cupidity and business ‘push.’ Even the policemen and the chapels are not infrequent enough to break the monotony. The sun is shining cheerfully; there is no fog; and though the smoke effectually prevents anything, whether faces and hands or bricks and mortar, from looking fresh and clean, it is not hanging heavily enough to trouble a Londoner.

The Devil’s Disciple

The Devil’s Disciple A Melodrama in Three Acts; Like several of Shaw’s early plays, The Devil’s Disciple first produced in 1897 and published in his collection Three Plays for Puritans in 1901 takes an existing popular theatrical form, in this case melodrama, and adapts it to serve Shaw’s dramatic purposes. In the preface to Three Plays for Puritans he writes: It does not contain a single even passably novel incident. Every old patron of the Adelphi a theatre which specialized in melodrama pit would recognize the reading of the will, the oppressed orphan finding a protector, the arrest, the heroic sacrifice, the court martial, the scaffold, the reprieve at the last moment, as he recognizes beefsteak pudding on the bill of fare at his restaurant. As well as using the stock devices of melodrama, Shaw writes in the preface that he unashamedly borrowed from previous works, Mrs Dudgeon being drawn from Mrs Clennam in Dickens’s Little Dorrit and Dick Dudgeon’s willingness to go the gallows for another man deriving from Sidney Carton’s sacrifice in A Tale of Two Cities. The play was given its first production in the United States and was successful there. When it was produced in England it had little success, the main reason probably being that the plot involves a British military defeat. Melodrama was attractive to Shaw at the beginning of his dramatic career because it incorporated certain ideals, attitudes, beliefs, values, which an audience would accept virtually without question but which he aimed to undermine. Thus he retains the form of melodrama but radically alters the content, his aim being to tackle the large numbers of shams, repressions, sentimentalities, insincerities, and ideal with which, he claims, the English identify and take pride in. Two of the ideals that Shaw sets out to attack in this play are the ideal of the family and the ideal of marriage. The main character of The Devil’s Disciple, Dick Dudgeon, is in revolt against the ideal of the family to the extent that he has rejected his own family. Identifying with the devil has prevented his spirit being taken over by his mother’s life denying religion. In the preface Shaw claims that it is the failure of marriage or the family that creates the idealization of them because idealists refuse to accept the reality of that failure and substitute ideals in place of the reality. Mrs Dudgeon is an idealist of this type, a person for whom marriage and the family have failed but who endeavours to hide this fact by turning them into ideals. She refused to marry the man she loved, Dick’s uncle Peter, because he was irreligious and instead married a man she didn’t love because he was god fearing, but she refuses to recognize that this act destroyed any chance of a happy marriage and family life and condemns Peter and her son for their refusal to conform. The setting of the play is New Hampshire in 1777 at the time of the American Revolution. In the first act Dick Dudgeon’s father has died and the action culminates in the reading of his will. Much to his mother’s consternation, a former will is revoked in order that the house and the land belonging to it be left to Dick Dudgeon, the eldest son. At the end of the act Dudgeon asserts that he is rightfully called The Devil’s Disciple much to the horror of Judith, the wife of the minister, Anthony Anderson. The second act is set in Anderson’s house. Dudgeon calls at the minister’s invitation. He is warned that he may be in danger as his uncle has been hanged by the British army. When the minister has to leave because he is summoned to go to Mrs Dudgeon who has been taken ill, Dudgeon and Judith are left alone together. The British come to the house to arrest Anderson but mistake Dudgeon for him.

Man of Destiny

George Bernard Shaw 1856 1950 was a worldrenowned Irish author. Born in Dublin, he moved to London when he turned twenty. Having rejected formal schooling, he educated himself by independent study in the reading room of the British Museum; he also began his career there by writing novels for which he could not find a publisher. His first success was as a music and literary critic, but he was drawn to drama and authored more than sixty plays during his career. Typically his work is leavened by a delightful vein of comedy, but nearly all of it bears earnest messages Shaw hoped his audiences would embrace. He remains the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize 1925 for his contribution to literature and an Oscar 1938 for Pygmalion. Among his most famous works are: Candida 1894, Arms and the Man 1894 and Man and Superman 1902 03.

The Philanderer

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG A lady and gentleman are making love to one another in the drawing room of a flat in Ashly Gardens in the Victoria district of London. It is past ten at night. The walls are hung with theatrical engravings and photographs Kemble as Hamlet, Mrs. Siddons as Queen Katharine pleading in court, Macready as Werner after Maclise, Sir Henry Irving as Richard III after Long, Miss Ellen Terry, Mrs. Kendal, Miss Ada Rehan, Madame Sarah Bernhardt, Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. A. W. Pinero, Mr. Sydney Grundy, and so on, but not the Signora Duse or anyone connected with Ibsen. The room is not a perfect square, the right hand corner at the back being cut off diagonally by the doorway, and the opposite corner rounded by a turret window filled up with a stand of flowers surrounding a statue of Shakespear. The fireplace is on the right, with an armchair near it. A small round table, further forward on the same side, with a chair beside it, has a yellow backed French novel lying open on it. The piano, a grand, is on the left, open, with the keyboard in full view at right angles to the wall. The piece of music on the desk is ‘When other lips.’ Incandescent lights, well shaded, are on the piano and mantelpiece. Near the piano is a sofa, on which the lady and

You Never Can Tell

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million books. com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ACT III The Clandons’ sitting room in the hotel. An expensive apartment on the ground floor, with a French window leading to the gardens. In the centre of the room is a substantial table, surrounded by chairs, and draped with a maroon cloth on which opulently bound hotel and railway guides are displayed. A visitor entering through the window and coming down to this central table would have the fireplace on his left, and a writing table against the wall on his right, next the door, which is further down. He would, if his taste lay that way, admire the wall decoration of Lincrusta Walton in plum color and bronze lacquer, with dado and cornice; the ormolu consoles in the corners; the vases on pillar pedestals of veined marble with bases of polished black wood, one on each side of the window; the ornamental cabinet next the vase on the side nearest the fireplace, its centre compartment closed by an inlaid door, and its corners rounded off with curved panes of glass protecting shelves of cheap blue and white pottery; the bamboo tea table, with folding shelves, in the corresponding space on the other side of the window; the pictures of ocean steamers and Landseer’ 2 dogs; the saddle bag ottoman in line with the door but on the other side of the room; the two comfortable seats of the same pattern on the hearthrug; and finally, on turning round and looking up, the massive brass pole above the window, sustaining a pair of maroon rep curtains with decorated borders of staid green. Altogether, a room well arranged to flatter the occupant’s sense of importance, and reconcile him to a charge of a pound a day for its use. Mrs. Clandon sits at the writing table, correcting proofs. Gloria is standing at the window, looking out in a tormented revery. The clock on the mantelpiece strikes J…

Captain Brassbound’s Conversion

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG On the heights overlooking the harbor of Mogador, a seaport on the west coast of Morocco, the missionary, in the coolness of the late afternoon, is following the precept of Voltaire by cultivating his garden. He is an elderly Scotchman, spiritually a little weatherbeaten, as having to navigate his creed in strange waters crowded with other craft but still a convinced son of the Free Church and the North African Mission, with a faithful brown eye, and a peaceful soul. Physically a wiry small knit man, well tanned, clean shaven, with delicate resolute features and a twinkle of mild humor. He wears the sun helmet and pagri, the neutral tinted spectacles, and the white canvas Spanish sand shoes of the modern Scotch missionary: but instead of a cheap tourist’s suit from Glasgow, a grey flannel shirt with white collar, a green sailor knot tie with a cheap pin in it, he wears a suit of clean white linen, acceptable in color, if not in cut, to the Moorish mind.

Caesar and Cleopatra

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG An October night on the Syrian border of Egypt towards the end of the X*XIII Dynasty, in the year 706 by Roman computation, afterwards reckoned by Christian computation as 48 B.C. A great radiance of silver fire, the dawn of a moonlit night, is rising in the east. The stars and the cloudless sky are our own contemporaries, nineteen and a half centuries younger than we know them; but you would not guess that from their appearance. Below them are two notable drawbacks of civilization: a palace, and soldiers. The palace, an old, low, Syrian building of whitened mud, is not so ugly as Buckingham Palace; and the officers in the courtyard are more highly civilized than modern English officers: for example, they do not dig up the corpses of their dead enemies and mutilate them, as we dug up Cromwell and the Mahdi. They are in two groups: one intent on the gambling of their captain Belzanor, a warrior of fifty, who, with his spear on the ground beside his knee, is stooping to throw dice with a sly looking young Persian recruit; the other gathered about a guardsman who has just finished telling a naughty story still current in English barracks at which they are laughing uproariously. They are about a dozen in number, all highly aristocratic young Egyptian guardsmen, handsomely equipped with weapons and armor, very unEnglish in point of not being ashamed of and uncomfortable in their profess sional dress; on the contrary, rather ostentatiously and arrogantly warlike, as valuing themselves on their military caste.

Mrs. Warren’s Profession

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG Mrs Warren’s Profession has been performed at last, after a delay of only eight years; and I have once more shared with Ibsen the triumphant amuseme*nt of startling all but the strongest headed of the London theatre critics clean out of the practice of their profession. No author who has ever known the exultation of sending the Press into an hysterical tumult of protest, of moral panic, of involuntary and frantic confession of sin, of a horror of conscience in which the power of distinguishing between the work of art on the stage and the real life of the spectator is confused and overwhelmed, will ever care for the stereotyped compliments which every successful farce or melodrama elicits from the newspapers. Give me that critic who rushed from my play to declare furiously that Sir George Crofts ought to be kicked. What a triumph for the actor, thus to reduce a jaded London journalist to the condition of the simple sailor in the Wapping gallery, who shouts execrations at Iago and warnings to Othello not to believe him! But dearer still than such simplicity is that sense of the sudden earthquake shock to the foundations of morality which sends a pallid crowd of critics into the street shrieking that the pillars of society are cracking and the ruin of the State is at hand. Even the Ibsen champions of ten years ago remonstrate with me just as the veterans of those brave days remonstrated with them. Mr Grein, the hardy iconoclast who first launched my plays on the stage alongside Ghosts and The Wild Duck, exclaimed that I have shattered his ideals. Actually his ideals! What would Dr Relling say? And Mr William Archer himself disowns me because I ‘cannot touch pitch without wallowing in it’. Truly my play must be more needed than I knew; and yet I thought I knew how little the others know.

John Bull’s Other Island

George Bernard Shaw 1856 1950 was a worldrenowned Irish author. Born in Dublin, he moved to London when he turned twenty. Having rejected formal schooling, he educated himself by independent study in the reading room of the British Museum; he also began his career there by writing novels for which he could not find a publisher. His first success was as a music and literary critic, but he was drawn to drama and authored more than sixty plays during his career. Typically his work is leavened by a delightful vein of comedy, but nearly all of it bears earnest messages Shaw hoped his audiences would embrace. He remains the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize 1925 for his contribution to literature and an Oscar 1938 for Pygmalion. Among his most famous works are: Candida 1894, Arms and the Man 1894 and Man and Superman 1902 03.

Major Barbara

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG It is after dinner on a January night, in the library in Lady Britomart Undershaft’s house in Wilton Crescent. A large and comfortable settee is in the middle of the room, upholstered in dark leather. A person sitting on it it is vacant at present would have, on his right, Lady Britomart’s writing table, with the lady herself busy at it; a smaller writing table behind him on his left; the door behind him on Lady Britomart’s side; and a window with a window seat directly on his left. Near the window is an armchair. Lady Britomart is a woman of fifty or thereabouts, well dressed and yet careless of her dress, well bred and quite reckless of her breeding, well mannered and yet appallingly outspoken and indifferent to the opinion of her interlocutory, amiable and yet perem ptory, arbitrary, and high tempered to the last bearable degree, and withal a very typical managing matron of the upper class, treated as a naughty child until she grew into a scolding mother, and finally settling down with plenty of practical ability and worldly experience, limited in the oddest way with domestic and class limitations, conceiving the universe exactly as if it were a large house in Wilton Crescent, though handling her corner of it very effectively on that assumption, and being quite enlightened and liberal as to the books in the library, the pictures on the walls, the music in the portfolios, and the articles in the papers.

Man and Superman

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG My dear Walkley: You once asked me why I did not write a Don Juan play. The levity with which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably by this time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning has arrived: here is your play! I say your play, because qui facit per alium facit per se. Its profits, like its labor, belong to me: its morals, its manners, its philosophy, its influence on the young, are for you to justify. You were of mature age when you made the suggestion; and you knew your man. It is hardly fifteen years since, as twin pioneers of the New Journalism of that time, we two, cradled in the same new sheets, made an epoch in the criticism of the theatre and the opera house by making it a pretext for a propaganda of our own views of life. So you cannot plead ignorance of the character of the force you set in motion. Yon meant me to epater le bourgeois; and if he protests, I hereby refer him to you as the accountable party. I warn you that if you attempt to repudiate your responsibility, I shall suspect you of finding the play too decorous for your taste. The fifteen years have made me older and graver. In you I can detect no such becoming change. Your levities and audacities are like the loves and comforts prayed for by Desdemona: they increase, even as your days do grow. No mere pioneering journal dares meddle with them now: the stately Times itself is alone sufficiently above suspicion to act as your chaperone; and even the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not produced every day, since after each such event its gravity is compromised, its platitude turned to epigram, its portentousness to wit, its propriety to elegance, and even its decorum into naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do not allow you to sign at the end, but which you take care to sign with the most extravagant flourishes between the lines. I am not sure that this is not a portent of Revolution. In eighteenth century France the end was at hand when men bought the Encyclopedia and found Diderot there. When I buy the Times and find you there, my prophetic ear catches a rattle of twentieth century tumbrils.

The Doctor’s Dilemma

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG On the 15th June 1903, in the early forenoon, a medical student, surname Redpenny, Christian name unknown and of no importance, sits at work in a doctor’s consulting room. He devils for the doctor by answering his letters, acting as his domestic laboratory assistant, and making himself indispensable generally, in return for unspecified advantages involved by intimate intercourse with a leader of his profession, and amounting to an informal apprenticeship and a temporary affiliation. Redpenny is not proud, and will do anything he is asked without reservation of his personal dignity if he is asked in a fellow creaturely way. He is a wide open eyed, ready, credulous, friendly, hasty youth, with his hair and clothes in reluctant transition from the untidy boy to the tidy doctor. Redpenny is interrupted by the entrance of an old serving woman who has never known the cares, the preoccupations, the responsibilities, jealousies, and anxieties of personal beauty. She has the complexion of a never washed gypsy, incurable by any detergent; and she has, not a regular beard and moustaches, which could at least be trimmed and waxed into a masculine presentableness, but a whole crop of small beards and moustaches, mostly springing from moles all over her face. She carries a duster and toddles about meddle somely, spying out dust so diligently that whilst she is flicking off one speck she is already looking elsewhere for another. In conversation she has the same trick, hardly ever looking at the person she is addressing except when she is excited. She has only one manner, and that is the manner of an old family nurse to a child just after it has learnt to walk. She has used her ugliness to secure indulgences unattainable by Cleopatra or Fair Rosamund, and has the further great advantage over them that age increases her qualifi cation instead of impairing it. Being an industrious, agreeable, and popular old soul, she is a walking sermon on the vanity of feminine prettiness. Just as Redpenny has no discovered Christian name, she has no discovered surname, and is known throughout the doctors’ quarter between Cavendish Square and the Marylebone Road simply as Emmy.

Getting Married

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage. If the mischief stopped at talking and thinking it would be bad enough; but it goes further, into disastrous anarchical action. Because our marriage law is inhuman and unreasonable to the point of downright abomination, the bolder and more rebellious spirits form illicit unions, defiantly sending cards round to their friends announcing what they have done. Young women come to me and ask me whether I think they ought to consent to marry the man they have decided to live with; and they are perplexed and astonished when I, who am supposed heaven knows why! to have the most advanced views attainable on the subject, urge them on no account to compromize themselves without the security of an authentic wedding ring. They cite the example of George Eliot, who formed an illicit union with Lewes. They quote a saying attributed to Nietzsche, that a married philosopher is ridiculous, though the men of their choice are not philosophers. When they finally give up the idea of reforming our marriage institutions by private enterprise and personal righteousness, and consent to be led to the Registry or even to the altar, they insist on first arriving at an explicit understanding that both parties are to be perfectly free to sip every flower and change every hour, as their fancy may dictate, in spite of the legal bond. I do not observe that their unions prove less monogamic than other people’s: rather the contrary, in fact; consequently, I do not know whether they make less fuss than ordinary people when either party claims the benefit of the treaty; but the existence of the treaty shews the same anarchical notion that the law can be set aside by any two private persons by the simple process of promising one another to ignore it.

Misalliance

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million books. com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: girl got the sack; and serve her right! After that, I was let do what I like. My father didnt want me to grow up a broken spirited spaniel, which is your idea of a man, I suppose. Johnny. Jolly good thing for you that m y father made you come into the office and shew what you were made of. And it didnt come to much: let me tell you that. When the Governor asked me where I thought we ought to put you, I said, ‘Make him the Office Boy.’ The Governor said you were too green. And so you were. Bentley. I daresay. So would you be pretty green if you were shoved into my father’s set. I picked up your silly business in a fortnight. Youve been at it ten years; and you havnt picked it up yet. Johnny. Dont talk rot, child. You know you simply make me pity you. Bentley. ‘Romance of Business’ indeed! The real romance of Tarleton’s business is the story that you understand anything about it. You never could explain any mortal thing about it to me when I asked you. ‘ See what was done the last time’: that was the beginning and the end of your wisdom. Youre nothing but a turnspit. Johnny. A what! Bentley. A turnspit. If your father hadnt made a roasting jack for you to turn, youd be earning twenty four shillings a week behind a counter. Johnny. If you dont take that back and apologize for your bad manners, I’ll give you as good a hiding as ever Bentley. Help! Johnny’s beating me! Oh! Murder! He throws himself on the ground, uttering piercing yells . Johnny. Dont be a fool. Stop that noise, will you. I’m not going to touch you. Sh sh Hypatia rushes in through the inner door, followed by Mrs Tarleton, and throws herself on her knees by Bentley. Mrs Tarleton, whose knees are stiffer, bends over him and tries to lift him. Mrs Tarleton is a shrewd and motherly old lad…

Androcles and the Lion

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG Overture; forest sounds, roaring of lions, Christian hymn faintly. A jungle path. A lion’s roar, a melancholy suffering roar, comes from the jungle. It is repeated nearer. The lion limps from the jungle on three legs, holding up his right forepaw, in which a huge thorn sticks. He sits down and contemplates it. He licks it. He shakes it. He tries to extract it by scraping it along the ground, and hurts himself worse. He roars piteously. He licks it again. Tears drop from his eyes. He limps painfully off the path and lies down under the trees, exhausted with pain. Heaving a long sigh, like wind in a trombone, he goes to sleep.

Overruled

George Bernard Shaw 1856 1950 was a worldrenowned Irish author. Born in Dublin, he moved to London when he turned twenty. Having rejected formal schooling, he educated himself by independent study in the reading room of the British Museum; he also began his career there by writing novels for which he could not find a publisher. His first success was as a music and literary critic, but he was drawn to drama and authored more than sixty plays during his career. Typically his work is leavened by a delightful vein of comedy, but nearly all of it bears earnest messages Shaw hoped his audiences would embrace. He remains the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize 1925 for his contribution to literature and an Oscar 1938 for Pygmalion. Among his most famous works are: Candida 1894, Arms and the Man 1894 and Man and Superman 1902 03.

Pygmalion

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place. The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to English men. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play. There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for many years past. When I became interested in the subject towards the end of the eighteen seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J. Ellis was still a living patriarch, with an impressive head always covered by a velvet skull cap, for which he would apologize to public meetings in a very courtly manner. He and Tito Pagliardini, another phonetic veteran, were men whom it was impossible to dislike. Henry Sweet, then a young man, lacked their sweetness of character: he was about as conciliatory to conventional mortals as Ibsen or Samuel Butler. His great ability as a phonetician he was, I think, the best of them all at his job would have entitled him to high official recognition, and perhaps enabled him to popularize his subject, but for his Satanic contempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in general who thought more of Greek than of phonetics. Once, in the days when the Imperial Institute rose in South Kensington, and Joseph Chamberlain was booming the Empire, I induced the editor of a leading monthly review to commission an article from Sweet on the imperial importance of his subject. When it arrived, it contained nothing but a savagely derisive attack on a professor of language and literature whose chair Sweet regarded as proper to a phonetic expert only. The article, being libelous, had to be returned as impossible; and I had to renounce my dream of dragging its author into the limelight. When I met him afterwards, for the first time for many years, I found to my astonishment that he, who had been a quite tolerably presentable young man, had actually managed by sheer scorn to alter his personal appearance until he had become a sort of walking repudiation of Oxford and all its traditions. It must have been largely in his own despite that he was squeezed into something called a Readership of phonetics there. The future of phonetics rests probably with his pupils, who all swore by him; but nothing could bring the man himself into any sort of compliance with the university, to which he nevertheless clung by divine right in an intensely Oxonian way. I daresay his papers, if he has left any, include some satires that may be published without too destructive results fifty years hence. He was, I believe, not in the least an ill natured man: very much the opposite, I should say; but he would not suffer fools gladly.

Heartbreak House

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG Heartbreak House is not merely the name of the play which follows this preface. It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war. When the play was begun not a shot had been fired; and only the professional diplomatists and the very few amateurs whose hobby is foreign policy even knew that the guns were loaded. A Russian playwright, Tchekov, had produced four fascinating dramatic studies of Heartbreak House, of which three, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull, had been performed in England. Tolstoy, in his Fruits of Enlightenment, had shown us through it in his most ferociously contemptuous manner. Tolstoy did not waste any sympathy on it: it was to him the house in which Europe was stifling its soul; and he knew that our utter enervation and futilization in that overheated drawingroom atmosphere was delivering the world over to the control of ignorant and soulless cunning and energy, with the frightful consequences which have now overtaken it. Tolstoy was no pessimist: he was not disposed to leave the house standing if he could bring it down about the ears of its pretty and amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the pickaxe with a will. He treated the case of the inmates as one of opium poisoning, to be dealt with by seizing the patients roughly and exercising them violently until they were broad awake. Tchekov, more of a fatalist, had no faith in these charming people extricating themselves. They would, he thought, be sold up and sent adrift by the bailiffs; and he therefore had no scruple in exploiting and even flattering their charm.

The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet

‘A tearing, flaring, revivalist drama’ was how Desmond MacCarthy described The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet. Set in America’s Wild West and aptly subtitled ‘A Sermon in Crude Melodrama’, this single act play concerns the conversion of a horse thief desperate to ‘keep the devil’ in him and die game. Published in 1909, it brought Shaw into conflict with the Lord Chamberlain of England, who banned it on the grounds of alleged blasphemy, and it was twelve years before the play was performed in a London theatre. In an interview Shaw commented, ‘I am sorry that Fanny’s First Play has destroyed the cherished legend that I am an unpopular playwright…
for the first time I have allowed a play of mine to run itself to death…
And the worst of it is it will not die.’First performed in 1911, the play is a delightful farce in which Shaw debates some of his favourite subjects: middle class morality, marriage, parents and children and women’s rights. And, deliberately concealing his authorship, Shaw took the opportunity to satirize contemporary drama critics who, he claimed, ‘do not know dramatic chalk from dramatic cheese when it is no longer labelled for them.’

Back to Methuselah

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million books. com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Defying the Lightning: a Frustrated Experiment One evening in 1878 or thereabouts, I, being then in my earliest twenties, was at a bachelor party of young men of the professional class in the house of a doctor in the Kensingtonian quarter of London. They fell to talking about religious revivals; and an anecdote was related of a man who, having incautiously scoffed at the mission of Messrs Moody and Saqkey, a then famous firm of American evangelists, was subsequently carried home on a shutter, slain by divine vengeance as a blasphemer. A timid minority, without quite venturing to question the truth of the incident for they naturally did not care to run the risk of going home on shutters themselves nevertheless shewed a certain disposition to cavil at those who exulted in it; and something approaching to an argument began. At last it was alleged by the most evangelical of the disputants that Charles Bradlaugh, the most formidable atheist on the Secularist platform, had taken out his watch publicly and challenged the Almighty to strike him dead in five minutes if he really existed and disapproved of atheism. The leader of the cavillers, with great heat, repudiated this as a gross calumny, declaring that Bradlaugh had repeatedly and indignantly contradicted it, and implying that the atheist champion was far too pious a man to commit such a blasphemy. This exquisite confusion of ideas roused my sense of comedy. It was clear to me that the challenge attributed to Charles Bradlaugh was a scientific experiment of a quite simple, straightforward, and proper kind to ascertain whether the expression of atheistic opinions really did involve any personal risk. It was certainly the method taught in the Bible, Elijah having confuted the prophets of Baal in precisely thatway, with every circu…

Saint Joan

Saint Joan by BERNARD SHAWA. Contents . . :PREFACE: Joan the Original and Presumptuous . 7.. loan and Socrates . . 8Contrast with Napoleon . 9Was Joan Innocent or Guilty ? . . IIJoans Good Looks . 13Joans Social Position . . 14Joans Voices and Visions 16The Evolutionary Appetite 19The Mere Iconography does not Matter 21The Modern Education which Joan Escaped 21Failures of the Voices 24Joan a Galtonic Visualize 25Joans Manliness and Militarism 25Was Joan Suicidal ? 28Joan Summed Up 29Joans Immaturity and Ignorance 30The Maid in Literature 31Protestant Misunderstandings of the Middle Ages 35Comparative Fairness of Joans Trial 36Joan not tried as a Political Offender 38The Church Uncompromised by its Amends 41Cruelty, Modern and Medieval 43Catholic AntiClericalism 45Catholicism not yet Catholic Enough 45The Law of Change is the Law of God 47Credulity, Modern and Medieval 49Toleration, Modern and Medieval 50Variability of Toleration 52The Conflict between Genius and Discipline 53Joan as Theocrat 55Unbroken Success essential in Theocracy 56Modem Distortions of Joans History 57History always Out of Date 58The Real Joan not Marvellous Enough for Us 58The Stage Limits of Historical Representation 60A Void in the Elizabethan Drama.. 61Tragedy, not Melodrama 62The Inevitable Flatteries of Tragedy 63Some Wellmeant Proposals for the Improvement of 65the Play . . The Epilogue . . 66To the Critics, lest they should feel Ignored . 67Saint Joan
7. PREFACE: JOAN THE ORIGINAL AND PRESUMPTUOUS JOAN OF ARC, a village girl from the Vosges, was bomabout 1412 burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in1431 rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456 designatedVenerable in 1904 declared Blessed in 1908 and finallycanonized in 1920, She is the most notable Warrior Saintin the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among theeccentric worthies of the Middle Ages. Though a professedand most pious Catholic, and the projector of a Crusadeagainst the Husites, she was In fact one of the first Protestant martyrs. She was also one of the first apostles of Nationalism, and the first French practitioner of Napoleonic realismin warfare as distinguished from the sporting ransom gambling chivalry of her time. She was the pioneer ofrational dressing for women, and, like Queen Christina ofSweden two centuries later, to say nothing of Catalina deErauso and innumerable obscure hero*ines who have disguised themselves as men to serve as soldiers and sailors,she refused to accept the specific womans lot, and dressedand fought and lived as men did.

Annajanska

STRAMMFEST snatching the telephone and listening for the answer . Speak louder, will you: I am a General I know that, you dolt. Have you captured the officer that was with her?…
Damnation! You shall answer for this: you let him go: he bribed you. You must have seen him: the fellow is in the full dress court uniform of the Panderobajensky Hussars. I give you twelve hours to catch him or…
what’s that you say about the devil?

The Perfect Wagnerite

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. Visit us online at www. 1stWorldLibrary. ORG In reading through this German version of my book in the Manuscript of my friend Siegfried Trebitsch, I was struck by the inadequacy of the merely negative explanation given by me of the irrelevance of Night Falls On The Gods to the general philosophic scheme of The Ring. That explanation is correct as far as it goes; but, put as I put it, it now seems to me to suggest that the operatic character of Night Falls On The Gods was the result of indifference or forgetfulness produced by the lapse of twenty five years between the first projection of the work and its completion. Now it is clear that in whatever other ways Wagner may have changed, he never became careless and he never became indifferent. I have therefore inserted a new section in which I show how the revolutionary history of Western Europe from the Liberal explosion of 1848 to the confused attempt at a socialist, military, and municipal administration in Paris in 1871 that is to say, from the beginning of The Niblung’s Ring by Wagner to the long delayed completion of Night Falls On The Gods, demonstrated practically that the passing away of the present order was going to be a much more complicated business than it appears in Wagner’s Siegfried. I have therefore interpolated a new chapter which will perhaps induce some readers of the original English text to read the book again in German.

Love Among the Artists

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world’s literature.

On Going to Church

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism

As a Fabian and lifelong socialist, Shaw believed that economic inequality was a poison destroying every aspect of our lives. Family affections and relations between the sexes were perverted by it. From Parliament to eduction our institutions were ‘corrupted at the root by pecuniary interest’. Idealism, integrity and piecemeal attempts at political reform were all futile in the face of the gross injustice built into our economic system. And because a capitalist economy could never function smoothly, private property was not merely a form of robbery, but robbery with violence. Published in 1928 when Shaw was 72, this book draws on decades of political activity and remains one of his brilliant exercises in propoganda.

Shaw on Shakespeare

‘With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.’ From Shaw on Shakespeare Celebrated playwright, critic and essayist George Bernard Shaw was more like the Elizabethan master that he would ever admit. Both men were intristic dramatists who shared a rich and abiding respect for the stage. Shakespeare was the produce of a tempestuous and enlightening era under the reign of his patron, Queen Elizabeth I; while G.B.S. reflected the racy and risque spirt of the late 19th century as the champion of modern drama by playwrights like Ibsen, and, later, himself. Culled from Shaw’s reviews, prefaces, letters to actors and critics, and other writings, Shaw on Shakespeare offers a fascinating and unforgettable portrait of the 16th century playwright by his most outspoken critic. This is a witty and provocative classic that combines Shaw’s prodigious critical acumen with a superlative prose style second to none except, perhaps, Shakespeare!.

Shaw’s Music

This is the first of three volumes of musical criticisms by Bernard Shaw reflecting his great breadth of knowledge of the works of Wagner, Bach and Mozart to more contemporary British composers such as Walton, Tippett and Britten. Shaw’s comments are notable for their insight, wit and lively intelligence. When Elgar appeard on the scene he said, ‘British music has taken a decisive step forward’. His unusual breadth of knowledge is also remarkable, being equally at home discussing barrel organs or the Bayreuth Festival, Salvation Army Bands or Italian opera.

Dear Mr. Shaw

An illustrated volume of letters from around the globe plus one from beyond the grave, written to George Bernard Shaw together with his witty and unpredictable replies. George Bernard Shaw calculated that he could have written about twenty more plays in the time expended on the quarter of a million letters and cards he sent in reply to those who wrote to him. At one stage he was receiving up to three proposals of marriage a week and included here are mutual declarations of love exchanged with Virginia Woolf and a final letter to one long standing correspondent: ‘Dear Elsie, Seek younger friends; I am extinct. G.B. Shaw’. He declared ‘I have become the father confessor of the whole world’, and this compilation indicates the wide range of topics on which he was requested to advise. To one aspirant author, W.H. Davis he ensured the success of ‘Autobiography of a super tramp’ but to another he responded ‘Who would want to read your rubbish after my preface?’ A great number of letters demanded attention to troubles great and small, serious and ridiculous from the plea for a new doggie agreed to the offer of lunch at Chequers and a knighthood declined.

The Sayings of George Bernard Shaw

This series collects together the best known aphorisms, epigrams and reflections of a wide variety of figures from antiquity to our own age: humorists and novelists, poets and philosophers, politicians and playwrights.

Complete Prefaces: 1930-50 v. 3

The final volume in a set of three which includes all of George Bernard Shaw’s prefaces, to his own works and to the works of others, in chronological order.

A Treatise on Parents and Children

Purchase one of 1st World Library’s Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library Literary Society is a non profit educational organization. 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 outliving the memory of the oldest human inhabitant. But the fact that new ones are born conclusively proves that they are not immortal. Do away with death and you do away with the need for birth: in fact if you went on breeding, you would finally have to kill old people to make room for young ones

The Wit and Wisdom of George Bernard Shaw

‘I often quote myself,’ remarked George Bernard Shaw, ‘because it adds spice to my conversation.’ The playwright remains eminently quotable, combining the wit of Wilde with the ferocity of Swift and the satire of Voltaire. This comprehensive reference, arranged by topic, features the best quips and comments from Shaw’s public works and private life. Subject index included.

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