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On the Eve is the third novel by Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. It has elements of social comedy but fell foul of radical critics who advocated the need of more overt reform. The story revolves around Elena Stakhova, a girl with a hypochondriac mother and an idle father, a retired guards lieutenant with a mistress. On the eve of the Crimean War, Elena is pursued by a free-spirited sculptor (Pavel Shubin) and a serious-minded student (Andrei Berzyenev). But when Berzyenev's revolutionary Bulgarian friend, Dmitri Insarov, meets Elena, they fall in love. In secretly marrying Insarov Elena disappoints her mother and enrages her father, who had hoped to marry her to a dull, self-satisfied functionary, Kurnatovski. Insarov nearly dies from pneumonia and only partly recovers. On the outbreak of war Insarov tries to return with Elena to Bulgaria, but dies in Venice. Elena takes Insarov's body to the Balkans for burial and then vanishes. Elizabeth Egloff adapted the novel into a stage play titled "The Lover." It premiered at Baltimore's Center Stage theater in 1996. (wikipedia.org)

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (9 November [O.S. 28 October] 1818 - 3 September [O.S. 22 August] 1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism. His novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction. Turgenev's artistic purity made him a favorite of like-minded novelists of the next generation, such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad, both of whom greatly preferred Turgenev to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. James, who wrote no fewer than five critical essays on Turgenev's work, claimed that "his merit of form is of the first order" (1873) and praised his "exquisite delicacy", which "makes too many of his rivals appear to hold us, in comparison, by violent means, and introduce us, in comparison, to vulgar things" (1896). Vladimir Nabokov, notorious for his casual dismissal of many great writers, praised Turgenev's "plastic musical flowing prose", but criticized his "labored epilogues" and "banal handling of plots". Nabokov stated that Turgenev "is not a great writer, though a pleasant one", and ranked him fourth among nineteenth-century Russian prose writers, behind Tolstoy, Gogol, and Anton Chekhov, but ahead of Dostoyevsky. His idealistic ideas about love, specifically the devotion a wife should show her husband, were cynically referred to by characters in Chekhov's "An Anonymous Story". Isaiah Berlin acclaimed Turgenev's commitment to humanism, pluralism, and gradual reform over violent revolution as representing the best aspects of Russian liberalism. (wikipedia.org)

Home of the Gentry, also translated as A Nest of the Gentlefolk, A Nest of the Gentry and Liza, is a novel by Ivan Turgenev published in the January 1859 issue of Sovremennik. It was enthusiastically received by the Russian society and remained his least controversial and most widely read novel until the end of the 19th century. The novel's protagonist is Fyodor Ivanych Lavretsky, a nobleman who shares many traits with Turgenev. The child of a distant, Anglophile father and a serf mother who dies when he is very young, Lavretsky is brought up at his family's country estate home by a severe maiden aunt, often thought to be based on Turgenev's own mother, who was known for her cruelty.Lavretsky pursues an education in Moscow, and while he is studying there, he spies a beautiful young woman at the opera. Her name is Varvara Pavlovna, and he falls in love with her and asks for her hand in marriage. Following their wedding, the two move to Paris, where Varvara Pavlovna becomes a very popular salon hostess and begins an affair with one of her frequent visitors. Lavretsky learns of the affair only when he discovers a note written to her by her lover. Shocked by her betrayal, he severs all contact with her and returns to his family estate.Upon returning to Russia, Lavretsky visits his cousin, Marya Dmitrievna Kalitina, who lives with her two daughters, Liza and Lenochka. Lavretsky is immediately drawn to Liza, whose serious nature and religious devotion stand in contrast to the coquettish Varvara Pavlovna's social consciousness. Lavretsky realizes that he is falling in love with Liza, and when he reads in a foreign journal that Varvara Pavlovna has died, he confesses his love to her and learns that she loves him in return.After they confess their love to one another, Lavretsky returns home to find his supposedly dead wife waiting for him in his foyer. It turns out that the reports of her death were false, and that she has fallen out of favor with her friends and needs more money from Lavretsky.Upon learning of Varvara Pavlovna's sudden appearance, Liza decides to join a remote convent and lives out the rest of her days as a nun. Lavretsky visits her at the convent one time and catches a glimpse of her as she is walking from choir to choir. The novel ends with an epilogue which takes place eight years later, in which Lavretsky returns to Liza's house and finds that, although many things have changed, there are elements such as the piano and the garden that are the same. Lavretsky finds comfort in his memories and is able to see the meaning and even the beauty in his personal pain. (wikipedia.org)

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (9 November [O.S. 28 October] 1818 - 3 September [O.S. 22 August] 1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism. His novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction. Turgenev's artistic purity made him a favorite of like-minded novelists of the next generation, such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad, both of whom greatly preferred Turgenev to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. James, who wrote no fewer than five critical essays on Turgenev's work, claimed that "his merit of form is of the first order" (1873) and praised his "exquisite delicacy", which "makes too many of his rivals appear to hold us, in comparison, by violent means, and introduce us, in comparison, to vulgar things" (1896). Vladimir Nabokov, notorious for his casual dismissal of many great writers, praised Turgenev's "plastic musical flowing prose", but criticized his "labored epilogues" and "banal handling of plots". Nabokov stated that Turgenev "is not a great writer, though a pleasant one", and ranked him fourth among nineteenth-century Russian prose writers, behind Tolstoy, Gogol, and Anton Chekhov, but ahead of Dostoyevsky. His idealistic ideas about love, specifically the devotion a wife should show her husband, were cynically referred to by characters in Chekhov's "An Anonymous Story". Isaiah Berlin acclaimed Turgenev's commitment to humanism, pluralism, and gradual reform over violent revolution as representing the best aspects of Russian liberalism. (wikipedia.org)

Fathers and Sons also translated more literally as Fathers and Children, is an 1862 novel by Ivan Turgenev, published in Moscow by Grachev & Co. It is one of the most acclaimed Russian novels of the 19th century. The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazarov, a nihilist who rejects the old order.Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons as a response to the growing cultural schism that he saw between liberals of the 1830s/1840s and the growing nihilist movement. Both the nihilists (the "sons") and the 1830s liberals (the "fathers") sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the Slavophiles, who believed that Russia's path lay in its traditional spirituality.Turgenev's novel was responsible for popularizing the use of the term nihilism, which became widely used after the novel was published.Fathers and Sons might be regarded as the first wholly modern novel in Russian literature (Gogol's Dead Souls, another main contender, was referred to by the author as a poem or epic in prose as in the style of Dante's Divine Comedy, and was at any rate never completed). The novel introduces a dual character study, as seen with the gradual breakdown of Bazarov's and Arkady's nihilistic opposition to emotional display, especially in the case of Bazarov's love for Madame Odintsova.The novel is also the first Russian work to gain prominence in the Western world, eventually gaining the approval of well established novelists Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Henry James.The Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Bazarov adopted his pseudonym from the character of Yevgeny Bazarov in this novel. (wikipedia.org)

A Sportsman's Sketches (also known as A Sportman's Notebook, The Hunting Sketches and Sketches from a Hunter's Album) is an 1852 cycle of short stories by Ivan Turgenev. It was the first major writing that gained him recognition.This work is part of the Russian realist tradition in that the narrator is usually an uncommitted observer of the people he meets. This series of short stories revealed Turgenev's unique talent as a short story writer. Evidently it greatly influenced all Russian short story writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin and many others.Other world writers also admired Turgenev's style. Sherwood Anderson was particularly influenced by Turgenev's literature. He considered A Sportsman's Sketches to be a paradigm for his own short stories.More recently, Turgenev has been criticized for his somewhat idealized characterization of muzhiks. Turgenev's muzhiks have been compared to other noble savages in 19th-century fiction (such as American Indians in works by J. F. Cooper). (wikipedia.org)

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (9 November [O.S. 28 October] 1818 - 3 September [O.S. 22 August] 1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism. His novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction. Turgenev's artistic purity made him a favorite of like-minded novelists of the next generation, such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad, both of whom greatly preferred Turgenev to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. James, who wrote no fewer than five critical essays on Turgenev's work, claimed that "his merit of form is of the first order" (1873) and praised his "exquisite delicacy", which "makes too many of his rivals appear to hold us, in comparison, by violent means, and introduce us, in comparison, to vulgar things" (1896). Vladimir Nabokov, notorious for his casual dismissal of many great writers, praised Turgenev's "plastic musical flowing prose", but criticized his "labored epilogues" and "banal handling of plots". Nabokov stated that Turgenev "is not a great writer, though a pleasant one", and ranked him fourth among nineteenth-century Russian prose writers, behind Tolstoy, Gogol, and Anton Chekhov, but ahead of Dostoyevsky. His idealistic ideas about love, specifically the devotion a wife should show her husband, were cynically referred to by characters in Chekhov's "An Anonymous Story". Isaiah Berlin acclaimed Turgenev's commitment to humanism, pluralism, and gradual reform over violent revolution as representing the best aspects of Russian liberalism. (wikipedia.org)

Carolyn Wells (June 18, 1862 - March 26, 1942) was an American writer and poet. Born in Rahway, New Jersey, she was the daughter of William E. and Anna Wells. After finishing school she worked as a librarian for the Rahway Library Association. Her first book, At the Sign of the Sphinx (1896), was a collection of literary charades. Her next publications were The Jingle Book and The Story of Betty (1899), followed by a book of verse entitled Idle Idyls (1900). After 1900, Wells wrote numerous novels and collections of poetry. In addition to books, Wells also wrote for newspapers. Her poetry accompanies the work of some of the leading lights in illustration and cartooning, often in the form of Sunday magazine cover features that formed continuing narratives from week to week. Her first known illustrated newspaper work is a two part series titled Animal Alphabet, illustrated by William F. Marriner, which appeared in the Sunday comics section of the New York World. Many additional series ensued over the years, including the bizarre classic Adventures of Lovely Lilly (New York Herald, 1906-07). The last series she penned was Flossy Frills Helps Out (American Weekly, 1942), which appeared after her death. She died at the Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York City in 1942. Wells had been married to Hadwin Houghton, the heir of the Houghton-Mifflin publishing empire founded by H.O.Houghton. Wells also had an impressive collection of volumes of poetry by others. She bequeathed her collection of Walt Whitman poetry, said to be one of the most important of its kind for its completeness and rarity, to the Library of Congress. (wikipedia.org)

A Sportsman's Sketches (Also known as A Sportman's Notebook, The Hunting Sketches and Sketches from a Hunter's Album) is an 1852 cycle of short stories by Ivan Turgenev. It was the first major writing that gained him recognition.This work is part of the Russian realist tradition in that the narrator is usually an uncommitted observer of the people he meets. This series of short stories revealed Turgenev's unique talent as a short story writer. Evidently it greatly influenced all Russian short story writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin and many others.Other world writers also admired Turgenev's style. Sherwood Anderson was particularly influenced by Turgenev's literature. He considered A Sportsman's Sketches to be a paradigm for his own short stories.More recently, Turgenev has been criticized for his somewhat idealized characterization of muzhiks. Turgenev's muzhiks have been compared to other noble savages in 19th-century fiction (such as American Indians in works by J. F. Cooper). (wikipedia.org)

Deep Lake, in Wisconsin, had a curious and sinister charm. By day it was a charming resort for summer visitors, but by night its character took on sinister depth like the swirl of its own waters. The murder of Sampson Tracy was purely the strangest of all murders. He died of a nail driven into his skull, and round his body were found flowers, fruit, a feather duster, and other seemingly meaningless articles. Find the motive and you find the criminal. But several people have motives which may have led them to the deed. Which one did it? Why did the murderer decorate his victim with those gruesome inanities? And how was the crime committed in a sealed room?

Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896 - June 8, 1975) was a nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. (wikipedia.org)

The Pirates of Zan is a science fiction novel by Murray Leinster, originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in 1959 as "The Pirates of Ersatz". It was nominated for the 1960 Hugo Award for Best Novel. It first appeared in book form in 1959 as one component of an Ace Double, bound with Leinster's The Mutant Weapon; this edition was reissued in 1971. A German translation was issued in hardcover in 1962, an Italian translation appeared in 1968, and a Dutch translation was published in 1972. Bart Books published a stand-alone American paperback edition in 1989. and Baen Books included Pirates in a Leinster omnibus, A Logic Named Joe, in 2005. The Pirates of Zan tells the story of Bron Hoddan, a one-time engineer who sets out on a career of interstellar piracy ostensibly to further more legitimate goals. Frederik Pohl reviewed Pirates favorably, saying "It would not seem possible that after thirty years of space-pirate stories any writer could make one come alive; but Bron Hoddan is a rather unique space pirate, and Murray Leinster is a nearly unique science-fiction writer". P. Schuyler Miller praised the novel as "a rare old piece of Leinsterian adventure yarning". Amazing Stories reviewer S. E. Cotts was less enthusiastic, describing it as a "piece of lightweight science fiction, guaranteed for entertainment purposes only".In The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, John Clute describes Pirates as "a competent but unremarkable Space Opera". (wikipedia.org)

Space Platform is a young adult science fiction novel by American writer Murray Leinster. It was published in 1953 by Shasta Publishers in an edition of 5,000 copies. It is the first novel in the author's Joe Kenmore series. The next, Space Tug, picks up almost immediately where Space Platform leaves off. P. Schuyler Miller reported the novel was marked by "the fastest kind of action" and "the feeling of technical authenticity." (wikipedia.org)

Space Tug is a young adult science fiction novel by author Murray Leinster. It was published in 1953 by Shasta Publishers in an edition of 5,000 copies. It is the second novel in the author's Joe Kenmore series. Groff Conklin gave it a mixed review in Galaxy, noting that it held "plenty of excitement though not much maturity." Boucher and McComas preferred it to the series's initial volume, but still found it "quite a notch below ... Leinster's adult work." P. Schuyler Miller reported the novel was marked by "the fastest kind of action" and "the feeling of technical authenticity." (wikipedia.org)

Operation: Outer Space is a science fiction novel by American writer Murray Leinster. It was first published in 1954 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 2,042 copies. The novel concerns the first interstellar flight, financed by making it into a television show. Galaxy reviewer Groff Conklin praised the novel as "a fast-paced, sardonic job that is primarily a satire on the future of mass communications." Anthony Boucher similarly praised the novel's satirical elements, although he found that "a slight lack of genuine bite and emotion" kept the novel "from being a front-ranker." P. Schuyler Miller reported that "It's no classic, but it's good reading." (wikipedia.org)

CONTENTSIntroductionI Plants as a Source of Revenue II List of Plants Having Medicinal Value III Cultivation of Wild Plants IV The Story of Ginseng V Ginseng Habits VI Cultivation VII Shading and Blight VIII Diseases of Ginseng IX Marketing and Prices X Letters from Growers XI General Information XII Medicinal Qualities XIII Ginseng in China XIV Ginseng - Government Description, Etc. XV Michigan Mint Farm XVI Miscellaneous Information XVII Golden Seal Cultivation XVIII Golden Seal History, Etc XIX Growers' Letters XX Golden Seal - Government Description, Etc. XXI Cohosh - Black and Blue XXII Snakeroot - Canada and Virginia XXIII Pokeweed XXIV Mayapple XXV Seneca Snakeroot XXVI Lady's Slipper XXVII Forest Roots XXVIII Forest Plants XXIX Thicket Plants XXX Swamp Plants XXXI Field Plants XXXII Dry Soil Plants XXXIII Rich Soil Plants XXXIV Medicinal Herbs XXXV Medicinal Shrubs

Arthur Robert Harding (July 1871 - 1930), better known as A. R. Harding, was an American outdoorsman and the founder of Hunter-Trader-Trapper and Fur-Fish-Game Magazine, and publisher, editor and author of many popular outdoor how-to books of the early 1900s. His company was known as the A. R. Harding Publishing Company of Columbus, Ohio and St. Louis, Missouri. Harding's books and magazines had an enormous impact on trapping, trap manufacturing, the fur trade, conservation and game laws.Harding was one of the first national advocates of scientific wildlife management, conservation and good sportsmanship. In his articles, he called for a closed season on furbearers, at a time when many states allowed year-round trapping and hunting. He fought to make the game laws fair and consistent, and opposed the federal government's use of poison to kill wolves and coyotes.His books and articles on fur farming accelerated the industry's potential. With the depletion of the beaver in Canada, the growing demand for fur articles, and the development of new dyeing techniques (which allowed mock furs to be made from cheaper pelts), the easily obtained, how-to information that Harding offered helped to quickly expand the home enterprise of raising furbearers. Harding's motives for supporting this business were not entirely profit-driven: he believed that fur farming would help reduce the pressure on wild populations, which were being destroyed through habitat depletion, and save the furbearers from extinction. (wikipedia.org)

You Never Can Tell is an 1897 four-act play by George Bernard Shaw that debuted at the Royalty Theatre. It was published as part of a volume of Shaw's plays entitled Plays Pleasant. The play is set in a seaside town and tells the story of Mrs Clandon and her three children, Dolly, Phillip and Gloria, who have just returned to England after an eighteen-year stay in Madeira.The children have no idea who their father is and, through a comedy of errors, end up inviting him to a family lunch. At the same time a dentist named Valentine has fallen in love with the eldest daughter, Gloria. However, Gloria considers herself a modern woman and claims to have no interest in love or marriage.The play continues with a comedy of errors and confused identities, with the friendly and wise waiter, Walter (most commonly referred to by the characters as "William," because Dolly thinks he resembles Shakespeare), dispensing his wisdom with the titular phrase "You Never Can Tell." (wikipedia.org)

INTRODUCTIONScattered from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean are thousands of trappers who use deadfalls, snares and other home-made traps, but within this vast territory there are many thousand who know little or nothing of them.The best and most successful trappers are those of extended experience. Building deadfalls and constructing snares, as told on the following pages, will be of value to trappers located where material - saplings, poles, boards, rocks, etc. - is to be had for constructing. The many traps described cannot all be used to advantage in any section, but some of them can.More than sixty illustrations are used to enable the beginner to better understand the constructing and workings of home-made traps. The illustrations are mainly furnished by the "old timers."Chapters on Skinning and Stretching, Handling and Grading are added for the correct handling of skins and furs adds largely to their commercial value.A. R. Harding

The Devil's Disciple is an 1897 play written by Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw. The play is Shaw's eighth, and after Richard Mansfield's original 1897 American production it was his first financial success, which helped to affirm his career as a playwright. It was published in Shaw's 1901 collection Three Plays for Puritans together with Captain Brassbound's Conversion and Caesar and Cleopatra. Set in Colonial America during the Revolutionary era, the play tells the story of Richard Dudgeon, a local outcast and self-proclaimed "Devil's disciple". In a twist characteristic of Shaw's love of paradox, Dudgeon sacrifices himself in a Christ-like gesture despite his professed Infernal allegiance. (wikipedia.org)

The Doctor's Dilemma is a play by George Bernard Shaw first staged in 1906. It is a problem play about the moral dilemmas created by limited medical resources, and the conflicts between the demands of private medicine as a business and a vocation. The eponymous dilemma of the play is that of the newly honoured doctor Sir Colenso Ridgeon, who has developed a revolutionary new cure for tuberculosis. However, his private medical practice, with limited staff and resources, can only treat ten patients at a time. From a group of fifty patients he has selected ten he believes he can cure and who, he believes, are most worthy of being saved. However, when he is approached by a young woman, Jennifer Dubedat, with a deadly ill husband, Louis Dubedat, he admits he can, at a stretch, save one more patient, but that the individual in question must be shown to be most worthy of being saved. However, the situation is complicated when an old friend and colleague reveals, he too, needs treatment. Sir Colenso must choose which patient he will save: a kindly, altruistic poor medical colleague, or an extremely gifted but also very unpleasant, womaniser, bigamist and amoral young artist. Sir Colenso falls instantly in love with the young and vivacious Mrs Dubedat and this makes it even harder for the doctor to separate his motives for the decision of who shall live. (wikipedia.org)

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 - 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1912) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success, Arms and the Man in 1894. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen, he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas. By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included Major Barbara, The Doctor's Dilemma and Caesar and Cleopatra.Shaw's expressed views were often contentious; he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform, and opposed vaccination and organised religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as equally culpable, and although not a republican, castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period. These stances had no lasting effect on his standing or productivity as a dramatist; the inter-war years saw a series of often ambitious plays, which achieved varying degrees of popular success. In 1938 he provided the screenplay for a filmed version of Pygmalion for which he received an Academy Award. His appetite for politics and controversy remained undiminished; by the late 1920s he had largely renounced Fabian Society gradualism and often wrote and spoke favourably of dictatorships of the right and left-he expressed admiration for both Mussolini and Stalin. In the final decade of his life he made fewer public statements, but continued to write prolifically until shortly before his death, aged ninety-four, having refused all state honours, including the Order of Merit in 1946.Since Shaw's death scholarly and critical opinion about his works has varied, but he has regularly been rated among British dramatists as second only to Shakespeare; analysts recognise his extensive influence on generations of English-language playwrights. The word Shavian has entered the language as encapsulating Shaw's ideas and his means of expressing them. (wikipedia.org)

"Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893, and first performed in London in 1902. The play is about a former prostitute, now a madam (brothel proprietor), who attempts to come to terms with her disapproving daughter"--

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. It premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913 and was first presented in English on stage to the public in 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle.In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era British playwrights, including one of Shaw's influences, W. S. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the story called Pygmalion and Galatea that was first presented in 1871. Shaw would also have been familiar with the musical Adonis and the burlesque version, Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1938 film Pygmalion, the 1956 musical My Fair Lady and its 1964 film version.Shaw mentioned that the character of Professor Henry Higgins was inspired by several British professors of phonetics: Alexander Melville Bell, Alexander J. Ellis, Tito Pagliardini, but above all, the cantankerous Henry Sweet. (wikipedia.org)

John Bull's Other Island is a comedy about Ireland, written by George Bernard Shaw in 1904. Shaw himself was born in Dublin, yet this is one of only two plays of his where he thematically returned to his homeland, the other being O'Flaherty V.C. The play was highly successful in its day, but is rarely revived, probably because so much of the dialogue is specific to the politics of the day. The play deals with Larry Doyle, originally from Ireland, but who has adopted English cultural customs and manners to fit in in England and Tom Broadbent, his English business partner. They are civil engineers who run a firm in London. They go to Roscullen, where Doyle was born, to develop some land.Doyle has no illusions about Ireland while Broadbent is taken with the romance of the place. Broadbent, a lively man who is seemingly not always aware of the impression he makes, becomes a favourite of the people. Before the play is over, it is clear he will marry Nora Reilly, the woman waiting for Doyle (who is more than happy to let her go) and become the area's candidate for Parliament after Doyle refuses to stand. Doyle has also 'called in' all his loans given "so easily" to the locals against their homes and intends (as he had planned all along) to make the village into an amusement park.Another major character is the defrocked priest Peter (Father) Keegan, the political and temperamental opposite of Broadbent, becomes suspicious of him upon his arrival and warns the locals against him. As popular as the play was originally, it is not one of Shaw's more revived pieces. Liz Kennedy reviewing a revival in 2004, during the New Labour government of Tony Blair, argued that the play was still relevant: "Shaw's vision from one hundred years ago was a far-seeing one...The drama has especial contemporary resonance in this continued period of political vacuum on our own shores" She particularly praised "Alan Cox, giving an appropriately mannered Blairite performance as Broadbent the Englishman...he might historically be a Liberal, but he sounded very New Labour." (wikipedia.org)

Major Barbara is a three-act English play by George Bernard Shaw, written and premiered in 1905 and first published in 1907. The story concerns an idealistic young woman, Barbara Undershaft, who is engaged in helping the poor as a Major in the Salvation Army in London"--

Getting Married is a play by George Bernard Shaw. First performed in 1908, it features a cast of family members who gather together for a marriage. The play analyses and satirises the status of marriage in Shaw's day, with a particular focus on the necessity of liberalising divorce laws. The preface to the published version of Getting Married is essentially a discussion of the future of marriage. Shaw takes the view that "Marriage remains practically inevitable", as the alternatives have too many disadvantages. In a future society, he argued, there could be no practicable replacement for marriage, neither individually negotiated deals or unconstrained "free love". Despite this, there was "a very pressing question of improving its conditions". Shaw went on to argue for sensible divorce laws to would protect the welfare of adults and children.Shaw notes that the form of the play adopts the classical unities, saying "the Greek form is inevitable when drama reaches a certain point in poetic and intellectual evolution." (wikipedia.org)

Heartbreak House: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes is a play written by George Bernard Shaw, first published in 1919 and first played at the Garrick Theatre in November 1920. According to A. C. Ward, the work argues that "cultured, leisured Europe" was drifting toward destruction, and that "Those in a position to guide Europe to safety failed to learn their proper business of political navigation". The "Russian manner" of the subtitle refers to the style of Anton Chekhov, which Shaw adapts. In the preface to the play Shaw acknowledges his debt to Chekhov, in particular to The Cherry Orchard. He writes that in comparison to himself, Chekhov was "more of a fatalist, had no faith in these charming people extricating themselves. They would, he thought, be sold up and sent adrift by the bailiffs; therefore he had no scruple in exploiting and even flattering their charm."Critics have taken very different views about Shaw's adaptation of Chekhov. Louis Kronenberger says that Shaw "turns Chekhov into a sort of literary Hyde Park soapbox dialectic for the theatre...We should be brow-beaten indeed to accept the idea that in Heartbreak House there is more than the merest hint or tiny reflection of Chekhov's true method, none of that pure, pains-taking economy and drawing, none of that humility of vision, none of that shy certainty of intuition. And Mr. Shaw's play has none of the variety in emotional rhythm that Chekhov's has, either in tone or in profound self-revelation among the characters."Louis Crompton, in contrast, says that, Shaw's avowed literary strategy, as we have seen, was to appeal to the most highly developed taste of the intelligentsia he was attacking. Shaw knew that Captain Shotover, his spokesman in the play, must first of all, like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, hold his audience spellbound if he was to strike home with his message. As Shaw himself put it, "The funny old captain, having lured them into his ship by his sallies, ties them up to the gangway and gives them a moral dozen." The result is Chekhov reorchestrated, so to speak, with tubas and drums added, to allow for the playing of a Dies Irae at the end. Heartbreak House is thus a redistillation of Chekhov and at the same time a passing beyond him, for Chekhov's world is static and directionless.Though his characters often talk grandly and eloquently about the future of humanity, it is obvious that they are not going to act on their convictions, and Chekhov records their orations with a sympathy that is undercut with humorous skepticism. His aim is to present men and women to us dramatically, not to point the way. As a result some critics have exalted his detachment into an end in itself and attacked Shaw as the perverter of the master. But this is to ignore the fact that Chekhov himself found the lack of commitment in contemporary writing its greatest failure and contemporary nihilism the age's bane.Thomas Whitaker says that Shaw differs markedly from Chekhov by presenting his characters as mercurial "rhetorical puppets" which gives them a "surprisingly rich vitality... a heartbroken adolescent can instantly become a cynic on the prowl, a maternal confidante can also be a seductive hostess and an emasculating wife, a philandering lapdog can be a shrewd judge of character and an offstage hero, and a mad hatter can be a mad Lear and a mad Shaw." (wikipedia.org)