George Bernard Shaw is one of the most famous and celebrated Irish playwrights and this new collection brings together the very best of his witty and entertaining comedies in one volume; Pygmalion, Major Barbara and Androcles and the Lion. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition has a preface by Oscar-winning actress Judi Dench. Pygmalion was first performed in 1914 and was an instant hit which then inspired the hit musical and award winning film, My Fair Lady. It tells the story of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins, who tries to elevate a feisty flower girl out of her working-class roots and into high society. In Major Barbara, idealistic Barbara is a major in the Salvation Army, at odds with her millionaire father as they war over the best route to salvation. Androcles and the Lion is a clever retelling of the Bible story about a gentle Christian who pulls a thorn from a lion’s paw. All three plays are not only wonderfully amusing, they also showcase Shaw's intense concerns about poverty, class and inequality.

The literary school called deconstruction has long been dogged by the charge that it is unprincipled, its doors closed to the larger world of moral and social concern. J. Hillis Miller, one of America s leading teacher-critics, sets the record straight by looking into a series of fictions that allow him to show that ethics has always been at the heart of deconstructive literary criticism. Miller proves his point not by assertion but by doing deconstruction is here in the hands of a master teacher. Miller s controlling image is Ovid s Pygmalion, who made a statue that came alive and whose descendants (the incestuous Myrrha, the bloodied Adonis) then had to bear the effects of what he did. All storytellers can be seen as Pygmalions, creating characters (personification) who must then act, choose, and evaluate (what Miller calls the ethics of narration ). If storytellers must be held accountable for what they create, then so must critics or teachers who have their own stories to tell when they write or discuss stories. If the choices are heavy, they are also, Miller wryly points out, happily unpredictable. The teacher s first ethical act is the choice of what to teach, and Miller chooses his texts boldly. As an active reader, the kind demanded by deconstruction, Miller refashions each story, another ethical act, an intervention that may have social, political, and historical consequences. He then looks beyond text and critical theory to ask whether writing literature, reading it, teaching it, or writing about it makes anything happen in the real world of material history."

This reissue of a classic book (the first edition of which sold 50,000 copies) explores the 'Pygmalion phenomenon', the self-fulfilling prophecy embedded in teachers' expectations.

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological figure. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1913.

Sci-fi luminary Stanley G. Weinbaum first broke through with the hugely influential story "A Martian Odyssey," one of the first to depict an alien being in a somewhat sympathetic light. Written in 1935, the short tale "Pygmalion's Spectacles" is no less innovative: it centers around the implications of a technology that's surprisingly close to what we now call virtual reality.

Pygmalion’s Chisel: For Women Who Are “Never Good Enough,” by Tracy M. Hallstead, examines the enduring critical presence in contemporary Western culture that scrutinizes, critiques, and sizes women down in their daily lives, despite rights gained through the centuries. Pygmalion was the ancient mythical sculptor who believed that all women were essentially flawed. He therefore endeavored to chisel to perfection a statue of a woman he called “Galatea.” Like the perpetually carved and perfected Galatea, women labor under Western culture’s a priori assumption that they are flawed, yet they are often unable to account for the self-criticism and self-doubt that result from this premise. As Hallstead analyzes the culture’s requirements for the perfect woman, she traces how cultural forces permeate women’s personal lives. In calling for solutions, she resurfaces the thinking of historical women who responded, rather than reacted, to the patriarchal culture that devalued them. In engaging these women of the past, whose struggles were eerily similar to our own, Hallstead encourages a responsive feminism that becomes the clear path leading outside Pygmalion’s chamber door.