Pygmalion

Synopsis

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition? includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader appreciate Shaw's wit and cynicism.In this delightful romance about the man too self-centered to fall in love and the woman too unsure of herself to want more out of life than the little she already has, George Bernard Shaw shakes the dust off the Cinderella story and tells it as only he can. Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl who wants to work in a flower shop, and Henry Higgins, the phoneticist who turns her into a "princess," are no mythological knight and maiden. Instead, even today, they resound with sharp humor and cutting dialogue. Originally published in 1914, Pygmalion invites readers and audience members to examine the roots of social prejudice and the true value of a human being, while also involving them in the improbable lives of Shaw's one-dimensional, yet endearing characters.