Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition
by Michael Holroyd
Holroyd's Bernard Shaw (Collections and Selections — One-Volume Definitive Edition)
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"When Michael Holroyd's multivolume life of Bernard Shaw was published, it was hailed as a masterpiece. Now the biography is available for the first time in a lively and accessible abridgment by the author." "Playwright, wit, socialist, polemicist, vegetarian, and irresistible charmer, Bernard Shaw was the most controversial literary figure of his age, the scourge of Victorian values and middle-class pretensions." "At the turn of the century, Shaw was in his prime, a theatrical impresario show more and author of those great campaigning plays - Man and Superman, Major Barbara, The Doctor's Dilemma, and John Bull's Other Island - that used laughter as an anesthetic for the operation he performed on British society. By 1914 the author of Pygmalion was the most popular writer in England, and increasingly recognized throughout Europe and America." "The reluctant recipient of a Nobel Prize for literature and an Academy Award for his screenplay for Pygmalion, Shaw became an international icon between the two world wars, feted from China and Soviet Russia to India and New Zealand, though still contriving to provoke the establishment in the United States, South Africa, and Ireland. He revealed himself increasingly as conjurer, fabulist, and seer through his powerful late works, including Saint Joan, the Chekhovian Heartbreak House, the modernist fantasy Back to Methuselah, and the imaginative dream plays and political extravaganzas."--BOOK JACKET. show lessTags
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historical biographies : great lives, well told
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Author Information
Michael Holroyd was born in London, England on August 27, 1935. He was educated at Eton College. He published his first book, a biography of writer Hugh Kingsmill, in 1964. He has also written the biographies of George Bernard Shaw, Augustus John, Lytton Strachey, and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. His other works include Basil Street Blues, show more Mosaic, and A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers. He has received several awards including the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in 2001, the David Cohen British Prize for Literature in 2005, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography for A Strange Eventful History in 2009. He was knighted for his services to literature in 2007. (Bowker Author Biography) Michael Holroyd has written acclaimed biographies of Lytton Strachey, Augustus John, & Bernard Shaw. He lives in London & Somerset, England. (Publisher Provided) show less
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition
- People/Characters
- George Bernard Shaw
Classifications
- Genres
- Biography & Memoir, Literature Studies and Criticism, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 822.912 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures British Drama 1900- 1900-1999 20th Century 1900-1945
- LCC
- PR5366 .H56 — Language and Literature English English Literature 19th century , 1770/1800-1890/1900
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 114
- Popularity
- 284,730
- Rating
- (4.33)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 2
