Candida - Paperback

by George Bernard Shaw (Author), Peter Gahan (Introduction by)

Exclusive to Penguin Classics: the definitive text of the play that jumpstarted Shaw's career as a dramatist--part of the official Bernard Shaw Library

A Penguin Classic

The Reverend Morell, a socialist preacher, brings a penniless young poet, Eugene Marchbanks, into his home, which is dominated by his fascinating wife, Candida. With its single stage setting and small cast of six characters, Shaw's play is deceptively simple. Centered on a romantic triangle and parodying courtly love and the domestic drama of Ibsen, Candida also abounds with classical allusions, the fervor of a religious revival, and poetic inspiration and aspirations.

This is the definitive text prepared under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence. The volume includes Shaw's preface of 1898.

Author Biography

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.