Candida

by George Bernard Shaw

Overview

Three-act play. According to Wikipedia: "George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 - 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings deal sternly with prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy to make their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class, and most of his writings censure that abuse. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455403349
Publisher:	B&R Samizdat Express
Publication date:	02/01/2011
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	185 KB

About the Author

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) is one of the world’s greatest literary figures. Born in Dublin, Ireland, he left school at fourteen and in 1876 went to London, where he began his literary career with a series of unsuccessful novels. In 1884 he became a founder of the Fabian Society, the famous British socialist organization. After becoming a reviewer and drama critic, he published a study of the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen in 1891 and became determined to create plays as he felt Ibsen did: to shake audiences out of their moral complacency and to attack social problems. However, Shaw was an irrepressible wit, and his plays are as entertaining as they are socially provocative. Basically shy, Shaw created a public persona for himself: G.B.S., a bearded eccentric, crusading social critic, antivivisectionist, language reformer, strict vegetarian, and renowned public speaker. The author of fifty-three plays, hundreds of essays, reviews, and letters, and several books, Shaw is best known for Widowers’ Houses, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, Caesar and Cleopatra, Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.

Peter Gahan (introducer) is a writer and lecturer specializing in psychoanalytical theory in film and literature. Originally from Ireland, Gahan now resides in California.

Dan H. Laurence (series editor; 1920–2008) was series editor for the works of George Bernard Shaw in Penguin. Formerly a New York University faculty member, Mr. Laurence left his tenured position in 1970 to dedicated his life to the collection and curation of Shaw's life, work, and letters. He served as the official literary advisor to Shaw's estate and published four volumes of his correspondence.

Editorial Reviews

Grade 3-5–Cándida is an 11-year-old girl from Caracas who is spending her summer vacation with her grandmother in the village of Maturín. In the three chapters of this book, readers get to know a typical middle schooler, her surprisingly mischievous Venezuelan grandmother, and the village itself, filled with interesting people. Cándida is at first embarrassed by her grandmother's countrified habits, but she soon discovers that there's logic behind her grandmother's odd behavior. The girl learns not to be overly concerned about what people think of her, not to be afraid of ghosts and things that go bump in the night, how to treat a crabby neighbor, and how to deal with her first love. Peli's illustrations are delightfully hip, showing Cándida in a midriff-baring shirt and baggy pants playing on her grandmother's patio, walking to town, and strolling through the town's main plaza. He takes pains with his pen-and-ink sketches to detail the life of the village, as well as the grandmother's shapeless flowery dresses and sparse hair. This delightful book is written in very accessible language and will appeal to reluctant readers. Especially recommended for school libraries.
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—María Otero-Boisvert, "Críticas"

Criticas

By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

“Candida probably deserves to be called Shaw’s masterpiece.” —Peter Gahan, from the Introduction

“[Shaw] did his best in redressing the fateful unbalance between truth and reality, in lifting mankind to a higher rung of social maturity. He often pointed a scornful finger at human frailty, but his jests were never at the expense of humanity.” —Thomas Mann
 
“Shaw will not allow complacency; he hates second-hand opinions; he attacks fashion; he continually challenges and unsettles, questioning and provoking us even when he is making us laugh. And he is still at it. No cliché or truism of contemporary life is safe from him.” —Michael Holroyd
 
“In his works Shaw left us his mind. . . . Today we have no Shavian wizard to awaken us with clarity and paradox, and the loss to our national intelligence is immense.” —The Sunday Times
 
“He was a Tolstoy with jokes, a modern Dr. Johnson, a universal genius who on his own modest reckoning put even Shakespeare in the shade.” —The Independent
 
“His plays were superb exercises in high-level argument on every issue under the sun, from feminism and God, to war and eternity, but they were also hits—and still are.” —The Daily Mail

From the Publisher