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William-Alan Landes

George Bernard Shaw

Heartbreak House (Penguin Classics) Paperback – January 1, 2001

by George Bernard Shaw (Author), Dan H. Laurence (Editor), David Hare (Introduction)

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Exclusive to Penguin Classics: the definitive text of Shaw’s telling indictment of the generation responsible for World War I—part of the official Bernard Shaw Library

A Penguin Classic

When Ellie Dunn joins a house party at the home of the eccentric Captain Shotover, she causes a stir with her decision to marry for money rather than love, and the Captain’s forthright daughter Hesione protests vigorously against the pragmatic young woman’s choice. Opinion on the matter quickly divides and a lively argument about money and morality, idealism and realism ensues as Hesione’s rakish husband, snobbish sister, and Ellie’s fiancé—a wealthy industrialist—enter the debate.

Heartbreak House was written between 1916 and 1917, as war raged across Europe. With its bold combination of high farce and bitter tragedy, it remains an uncannily prophetic depiction of a society on the threshold of an abrupt awakening.

This is the definitive text under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence. This volume includes Shaw’s preface of 1919, the cast list from the first production of Heartbreak House, and a list of his principal works.

Print length

176 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Classics
Publication date

January 1, 2001
Dimensions

5.2 x 0.42 x 7.78 inches
ISBN-10

0140437878
ISBN-13

978-0140437874
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Editorial Reviews

Review

By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

“[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

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.

David Hare (introducer) is an internationally-renowned playwright whose works include Plenty, The Judas Kiss, and The Blue Room.

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics (January 1, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140437878
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140437874
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.42 x 7.78 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,989,367 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13,360 in Dramas & Plays (Books)

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3.9 out of 5

29 global ratings

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M. A. Seifter

"Heartbreak House", in the Russian manner

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 7, 2018

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Ironically, I detest Shaw, and having read a good bloc of his plays and mini-book prefaces to his plays, I detest his plays in general. Shaw's dramatic characters are invariably one dimensional megaphones, put on stage to popularize either his own idiosyncratic ideas, or-this in his prefaces-to trumpet his own peerless genius in coming up with these ideas. His opinion of mankind in general is barely, if at all, charitable, his being thoroughly convinced that the ignorant masses are and have been manipulated and treated as a potter would wet clay by their opportunistic, soulless elite, be they kings, democratic politicos, professors, clergymen, or big businessmen, since the beginning of time. His opinions and purported sparks of polemical genius can usually be narrated in one quarter the number of words it takes to write them out, and are obviously intended to point to his own writing-creative genius. He reviled Shakespeare (who he always managed to misspell) out of sheer envy; he desired to occupy the top spot of English/Western world drama that was unfortunately already occupied by the Bard of Avon. He admired Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler as needed correctives to the sad, feckless world of post-World War I Western democracy and capitalism. And, by 1940, he had written himself out, in plays at least, and with a decade more of life in him, he had few more ideas to peddle an increasingly alien world, no longer-if ever-hanging on his every too-well enunciated syllable. All this being said, however, the Penguin Classics edition of "Heartbreak House" is a splendid, and a very affordable buy for anyone curious about the drama and polemical prose of this man. The well-written introduction by David Hare makes splendid reading, and argues almost convincingly for Shaw's still-active relevance in the world of ideas and of the stage. If you want to defeat an enemy, or someone whose ideas you revile, you must get to know him through and through, and this necessity is well satisfied by this Penguin Classics edition of this play, along with their full line of Shaw's not at all timeless dramatic productions.

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john a north

scripts were satisfactory

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 18, 2019

Verified Purchase

play scripts in fair/ good condition. Used by a playreading group.

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Sarah Galperin

satire against imperial culture

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 24, 2008

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Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

This is a fascinating, fast-paced comedy with dark undertones about a bankrupt society. It is set in the late nineteenth - early twentieth century, but the issues turn out to be very contemporary: the question of capitalism, security vs. adventure, gender roles. I recommend it!

2 people found this helpful

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Leor C. Farkas

Be careful with this edition...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 15, 2005

Verified Purchase

Merely a warning about the Dover Thrift Edition of "Heartbreak House": Practically every page has omitted apostrophes and/or added spaces wit hin wor ds. For me, it quickly became tiresome.

(Of course it's possible - though unlikely - that I just got a bad copy from a one-time printing glitch. Your call.)

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

A comic delight

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 14, 2010

Many people consider the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) a genius, a comic, a deep thinker, a man concerned about culture and the world's future, an opponent of complacency, a socialist, sensitive to the degree that he fought against using animals for experiments and eating them; he was a vegetarian.
This 1913 play is a comic delight. Think of the old lady in the TV comedy Golden Girls who speaks her mind without care of what she says, mentions what is appropriate but what others would not state openly, says what is funny and often hilarious. Think what the situation would be if all or virtually all the characters in the play were this open. Think also of elevating the plot and language of Golden Girls, of having the play written by a master like Shaw. This is Heartbreak Hotel.
A gaggle of such boisterous characters descend upon the eccentric home of 88 year old Captain Shotover, who may or may not be mentally present, as if it was a hotel, including a naïve young girl, Ellie, who feels obligated to be engaged to a rich stuffy older man, as old as her father, because her father told her that the man helped him by giving him money - (but did he, and is she really naive?); the Captain's daughter who is determined to awaken Ellie and break off her engagement; the daughter's husband who loves his wife dearly but has a need to flirt with other women and tell them heroic lies about his fanciful adventures; the daughter's sister who married two decades earlier to escape her father's mad house who has just returned after 23 years and is fascinated by her sister's husband; Ellie's father and her suitor, a quirky nurse, and others who are equally strange and fascinating.
A sample line by the captain's daughter: "Why do they (men) envy us the pain with which we bring them into the world, and make strange dangers and torments for themselves to be even with us?"
Underlying all of the humor, Shaw offers a keen analysis of the class struggle between the rich and the poor, those who own businesses and those who work in them.

2 people found this helpful

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Partha Pratim Banerjee

Too short an introduction

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on November 28, 2020

Verified Purchase

The best thing about the edition is that we are allowed an introduction into the Shavian scheme of things, but the flip side of it is the introduction is by no means comprehensive. We would have welcomed a more detailed discussion of the play's historical importance. Some end notes were also called for.

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