Book description
This volume features the play Misalliance, which explores the
incongruities of human nature and family life, and Shaw's one-act
burlesque, The Fascinating Foundling.
BERNARD SHAW was born in Dublin in 1856. After his arrival in London
in 1876 he became an active Socialist and a brilliant platform
speaker. He wrote on many social aspects of the day: on Common
Sense about the War (1914), How to Settle the Irish
Question (1917) and The Intelligent Woman s Guide to Socialism
and Capitalism (1928). He undertook his own education at the
British Museum and consequently became keenly interested in cultural
subjects. Thus his prolific output included music, art and theatre
reviews, which were collected into several volumes such as Music in
London 1890 1894 (3 vols, 1931); Pen Portraits and
Reviews (1931); and Our Theatres in the Nineties (3 vols,
1931). He also wrote five novels and some shorter fiction, including
The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales and
Cashel Byron s Profession, both published in Penguin s
Bernard Shaw Library.
He conducted a strong attack on the London theatre and was closely
associated with the intellectual revival of British theatre. His plays
fall into several categories: Plays Pleasant ; Plays Unpleasant ;
comedies; chronicle-plays; metabiological Pentateuch (Back to
Methuselah, a series of plays); and political extravaganzas .
Bernard Shaw died in 1950.
