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5 July
George Bernard Shaw resigns from the Edison Phone Co. 1880
George Bernard Shaw, born in Dublin in 1856, is best remembered as a dramatist, although throughout his life he was a prolific writer, satirist, novelist, critic, wit and journalist. A dedicated socialist, his political leanings often had a major influence on his work, both in his plays (such as
Major Barbara
) and in his commentaries (
The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
).
Pygmalion
is perhaps his most famous work, the story of flower girl Eliza Doolittle who falls under the tutelage of the bullying phonetician, Professor Henry Higgins. The play is a brilliant and humorous reworking of the myth of Pygmalion, exposing the inherent superficiality of the class system and its effect on individual lives. The play was adapted to a screen musical in 1964 as
My Fair Lady
. Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.
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