ANDROCLES AND THE LION, OVERRULE, PYGMALION
London: Constable, 1916. First Edition. Hardcover. First Printing of one of Shaw's most popular plays, PYGMALION, a radical reworking of Ovid's classic tale with a feminist twist. Shaw wrote PYGMALION for the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell who appeared to be the only actress willing to say the taboo word "bloody" spoken by her character Eliza Doolittle. In 1938 the play was made into an excellent movie, for which Shaw's screenplay won an Oscar, starring Leslie Howard as Professor Higgins. The play reached a much wider audience when it was transformed by Alan Jay Lerner into the musical MY FAIR LADY and later the film of the same title directed by George Cukor and starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn who replaced an irate Julie Andrews, the star of the Broadway musical. The Irish playwright, who wrote more plays than Shakespeare, won the Nobel Prize in 1925 and lived to the age of 94, dying from complications resulting from a broken leg suffered after falling out of a tree. This is a fine association copy INSCRIBED on the half title page and SIGNED "To Lion Phillimore/from Bernard Shaw/22 Nov. 1917." Lucy "Lion" Phillimore, wife of British liberal politician, Robert Charles Phillimore, was along with her husband and Shaw, members of the Fabian Society, a British socialist organization whose purpose was to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. The Phillimores were part of Shaw's tight-knit intellectual and socialist circle in England, and their home served as a regular gathering place for prominent thinkers, including H. G. Wells. Shaw, an avid and skilled amateur photographer, took numerous portraits and archival photographs of Lion. While signed books by Shaw are not rare, signed copies of this work are truly scarce, especially one with an association. Small Monrieth House Library label loosely laid in. A bit of fading to the cloth. Near Fine. Item #022596
Price: $3,500.00