2014-2015学年高中英语 Unit 4 Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw素材 新人教版选修8.docVIP

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) -Biography Irish dramatist, literary critic, a socialist spokesman, and a leading figure in the 20th century theater. Shaw was a freethinker, defender of womens rights, and advocate of equality of income. In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Shaw accepted the honor but refused the money. George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, where he grew up in something close to genteel poverty. I am a typical Irishman; my family came from Yorkshire, Shaw once said. His father, George Carr Shaw, was in the wholesale grain trade. Lucinda Elisabeth (Gurly) Shaw, his mother, was the daughter of an impoverished landowner. She was 16-years younger than her husband. George Carr was a drunkard - his example prompted his son to become a teetotaller（滴酒不沾的人）. When he died in 1885, his children and wife did not attend his funeral. Young Shaw and his two sisters were brought up mostly by servants. A man of many causes, Shaw supported abolition of private property, radical change in the voting system, campaigned for the simplification of spelling, and the reform of the English alphabet. As a public speaker, Shaw gained the status of one of the most sought-after orators in England. In 1895 Shaw became a drama critic for the Saturday Review. Articles written for the paper were later collected in OUR THEATRES IN THE NINETIES (1932). Music, art, and drama criticism Shaw wrote for Dramatic Review (1885-86), Our Corner (1885-86), The Pall Mall Gazette (1885-88), The World (1886-94), and The Star (1888-90) as Corno bi Basetto. His music criticism were collected in SHAWS MUSIC (1981). After lacing a shoe too tightly, an operation was performed on his foot for necrosis; Shaw was unable to put his foot on the ground for eighteen months. During this period he wrote CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (1901) and THE PERFECT WAGNERITE (1898). The Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen had a great influence on Shaws thinking. For a summer meeting of the Fabian Society in 1