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HEARTBREAK HOUSE

A Fantasia in the Roman

Manner on English

Themes

by: Bernard Shaw

with no introduction and notes by A. C. Ward

Dated: 1961

197 Pages

Published by: Longmans, Green and Co

London - New York - Toronto

in association with

Constable and Co Ltd

London

Condition: This book has no dust cover jacket. It has some wear, some age toning, rubbing, scuffing, stains/dirtiness, some numbers

and three lines of "white out" on the inside front free end paper, some underlining on about 6 pages. (see pic 10 for example)

Please look at All the pictures as sometimes it's possible we may have missed something.

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A little info from Wikipedia

Heartbreak House: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes is a play written by George Bernard Shaw, first published in 1919 and first played at the Garrick Theatre in November 1920. According to A. C. Ward, the work argues that "cultured, leisured Europe" was drifting toward destruction, and that "Those in a position to guide Europe to safety failed to learn their proper business of political navigation". The "Russian manner" of the subtitle refers to the style of Anton Chekhov, which Shaw adapts.

Ellie Dunn, her father, and her fiancé are invited to one of Hesione Hushabye’s infamous dinner parties, to be held at the house of her father, the eccentric Captain Shotover, an inventor in his late 80s who is trying to create a "psychic ray" that will destroy dynamite. The house is built in the shape of the stern of a ship. Lady Utterword, Shotover's other daughter, arrives from Australia, but he pretends not to recognise her. Hesione says they are running out of money. Shotover needs to invent a weapon of mass destruction. His last invention, a lifeboat, did not bring in much cash. Ellie intends to marry businessman Boss Mangan, but she really loves a man she met in the National Gallery. Unfortunately, her fiancé is a ruthless scoundrel, her father's a bumbling prig, and it turns out that the man she's in love with is Hector, Hesione's husband, who spends his time telling romantic lies to women. Marriage to Mangan will be the sensible choice.

A burglar is captured. They say they do not want to prosecute him, but he insists he will turn himself in unless they pay him not to. It turns out that the burglar is one of Shotover's old crewmen. He confesses that he is not a real burglar. He deliberately gets himself captured to get charitable assistance from his victims. Shotover laments that the younger generation have lost their romance. Ellie suggests that she should marry Shotover, but he says he's already married to a black Jamaican wife, though it's possible she's now dead.

Lady Utterword says that everything will be put to right if only they get some horses. Every English family should have horses. Mangan declares that he is to head a government department, but Ellie suddenly announces that she cannot marry him as she is now Shotover's "white wife". Shotover predicts that the ship of England will founder, as the captain is drunk and the crew are all gambling. The maid enters with news that an air-raid is about to happen. The lights are switched off, but Hector switches them back on to demonstrate his lack of concern about the threat. A bomb lands in the garden, blowing up Shotover's store of dynamite and killing Mangan and the burglar who were hiding there. When it is over everyone says how bored they are. They hope the bombs will come again tomorrow.

The play was first performed in New York at the Garrick Theatre in November 1920, with Albert Perry as Shotover and Elizabeth Risdon as Ellie Dunn. It was first shown in England on 18 October 18, 1921, at the Royal Court, with Ellen O'Malley as Ellie and Brember Wills as Shotover. Edith Evans played Lady Utterword.

Heartbreak House is not often performed due to its complex structure; however it is argued that the genius of the play cannot be fully appreciated without seeing it in performance. Its subject-matter is the ignorance and indifference exhibited by the upper and upper-middle classes to the First World War and its consequences. The self-indulgence and lack of understanding of the high-class characters are central issues in British society at the time that the play illuminates. A major Broadway revival was mounted in 1984, with an all star cast headed by Sir Rex Harrison as Shotover (a role for which he was nominated for a Tony), and featuring Amy Irving, Rosemary Harris, Dana Ivey, George N. Martin, and Tom Aldredge.

The play has been performed several times at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada: most notably in 1968 directed by Val Gielgud and with Jessica Tandy, Paxton Whitehead, Tony Van Bridge and Frances Hyland (this production was recorded and released by Caedmon Records [Caedmon TRS-335]); then in summer 2011 directed by Christopher Newton with Michael Ball as Captain Shotover, Blair Williams as Hector, Patrick McManus as Mazzini, Laurie Paton as Ariadne, Benedict Campbell as Mangan and Robin Evans Willis as Ellie. It also formed part of Chichester Festival Theatre's 50th Anniversary Season in 2012 and cast Derek Jacobi as Captain Shotover. The Denver Center Theatre Company staged it for a run March 30-April 29, 2012.

It is available on VHS based on the 1985 television version directed by Anthony Page, with Rex Harrison as Shotover, Amy Irving as Ellie, and Rosemary Harrisas Hesione. Also available on DVD is the 1977 BBC Play of the Month version directed by Cedric Messina, with John Gielgud as Shotover, Lesley-Anne Down as Ellie, and Siân Phillips as Hesione.

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was a Nobel-Prize-winning Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama. He wrote more than 60 plays, leading British theater into the modern era with hardbitten social satire, as in Pygmalion (1913) in which a picky linguist transforms a Cockney flower girl into a lady by changing her accent, fifty years later transformed into the hit musical, My Fair Lady (1964).

He was also an essayist, novelist and short story writer. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems with a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Issues which engaged Shaw's attention included education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.

He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society, a highly influential British organization which advocated gradual, as opposed to revolutionary, socialism and became the foundation for the British Labour Party. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the St Pancras Vestry.

Shaw was noted for expressing his views in uncompromising language, whether on vegetarianism (branding his own pre-vegetarian self a "cannibal"), the development of the human race (his own brand of eugenics was driven by encouragement, unusual at the time, of marriage across race and class lines) or on political questions as a life-long Socialist and leftist.

In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St Lawrence in a house now called Shaw's Corner. Shaw died there, aged 94, from chronic problems exacerbated by injuries he incurred by falling from a ladder.

He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize (Literature, 1925) and an Academy Award (Best Adapted Screenplay, 1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (an adaptation of his play of the same name), respectively. Shaw refused all other awards and honours, including the offer of a knighthood.

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