| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9781419177149 | | Publisher: Kessinger Publishing | | Publish Date: 4/10/2007 | | Buy.com Sku: 39944727 | | Item#: BJX92N | | Dimensions (in Inches) 9.25H x 7.5L x 0.5T | | Pages: 88 |
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| | | JULIA. I couldn't bear it any longer. Oh, to see them sitting there at lunch together, laughing, chatting, making game of me! I should have screamed out in another moment--I should have taken a knife and killed her--I should have--(Cuthbertson appears with the luncheon bill in his hand. He stuffs it into his waistcoat pocket as he comes to them. He begins speaking the moment he enters.)
| Author Bio| George Bernard Shaw | | Playwright George Bernard Shaw, perhaps the greatest satirist of the 20th century, was born (in 1856) and raised in Dublin, where he developed a hatred of organized education which would permeate his entire body of work. In 1876, he moved to London, where he began his literary career as a journalist and critic, while producing five novels which would not be published until after he had gained renown as a dramatist. His first play, WIDOWERS' HOUSES, was produced in 1892, and employed the mixture of humor and social comment which would become his trademark dramatic formula. At this same time, Shaw discovered a political philosophy which coincided perfectly with his personal beliefs--socialism. He became a charter member of the Fabian Society, a community of socialists who were one of the founding forces behind the Labour Party. Shaw was one of the most prominent and outspoken members of the group, penning several pamphlets and preaching on street corners, which he claimed helped him to overcome his profound shyness. In 1898, he married a fellow member of the Fabian Society, Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a match which lasted until her death in 1943. Shaw produced a strong of humorous hit plays in the early years of the 20th century, topped off by his most enduring work, PYGMALION, in 1912. However, his faith in the human spirit was shattered by the abomination of World War I, which he openly opposed in a series of inflammatory newspaper columns which courted treason and earned Shaw the ire of the English nation. In fact, throughout his career, Shaw's status as a beloved literary figure was tempered by his complex and controversial political views. For instance, his socialist philosophy, which encompassed the abolishment of land ownership, eventually led him to write extensively in support of Joseph Stalin. Shaw was also an avid supporter of vegetarianism, though he roundly condemned vaccines and other emergent treatments as the medical equivalent of alchemy. In 1921, he presented his self-proclaimed masterpiece, BACK TO METHUSALEH, a massive five-play saga which proclaimed that an unconscious, benevolent process of selective breeding has driven human evolution since its inception. Not surprisingly, the erudite epic was not well received, though Shaw regained some of his former popularity in 1923 with SAINT JOAN, his version of the life of Joan of Arc. Shaw received the Nobel Prize in 1925, which he accepted only at his wife's behest, and in 1938 he garnered an Academy Award for the film adaptation of PYGMALION, becoming the first person to win both of these coveted honors. Shaw was openly disdainful of his Oscar award, and the statue itself became so tarnished and dust-covered that it was reportedly used as a doorstop by the curator of the Shaw Museum after the playwright's death. Shaw died in 1950 at the age of 94, but not from old age--he fell from a ladder while pruning a tree on his estate. |
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