Book of the Week: Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion both delighted and scandalized its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw’s feminist views. In Shaw’s hands, the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform Eliza Dolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in polite society. The one thing he overlooks is that his creation has a mind of her own. This is the definitive text produced under the editorial supervision of Dan H.Laurence, with an illuminating introduction by Nicholas Grene, discussing the language and politics of the play. Also included in this volume is Shaw’s preface, as well as his sequel written for the first publication in 1916, to rebut public demand for a more conventionally romantic ending.