Bibliographic information:
ISBN: 9781913724658
Paperback • 256pp • £7.99
129 mm x 198 mm
19 January 2022
BIC: FC, DD
Territory: World English

Saint Joan

George Bernard Shaw

With an introduction by Simon Mundy

Paperback

256pp

ISBN: 9781913724658

£7.99

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The life of fifteenth-century heroine Joan of Arc is the stuff of legend, and her cruel death (burnt at the stake aged just nineteen) led to her being declared a martyr, granting her an extraordinary legacy.

Following her canonisation in 1920, and against a history of overly romanticised retellings of the story, Bernard Shaw put pen to paper to give a more accurate account, without resorting to demonising her persecutors; as he writes in his preface, ‘there are no villains in the piece’.

It was an immediate success, securing him the Nobel Prize for Literature, although critics were initially divided by this frank approach – T.S. Eliot was outraged, saying, ‘instead of the saint or the strumpet of the legends… he has turned her into a great middle-class reformer.’ Nonetheless – or perhaps even because of this controversy – Saint Joan is considered one of Shaw’s finest and most important plays.

This edition has an introduction by Simon Mundy, who has spent several years as Vice-President of PEN International’s Writers for Peace Committee, and extensive explanatory notes.

 
e-book available* 

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was Nobel Prize-winning writer, political activist and critic. One of the most important writers of the twentieth century, he has been described as ‘second only to Shakespeare in the British theatrical tradition’. Although he wrote over sixty plays, he is best remembered today for Man and Superman, Pygmalion and Saint Joan.

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