George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield, known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, The Sunday Telegraph and The New Republic, and she was a correspondent for The Bookman.
A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which almost everything turns out for the best for the main protagonists and their sidekicks, while the main villains/antagonists are defeated.
DameFelicitas Corrigan OSB was an English Benedictine nun, author and humanitarian.
Brigid Antonia Brophy, was an English author, literary critic and polemicist. She was an influential campaigner who agitated for many types of social reform, including homosexual parity, vegetarianism, humanism, and animal rights. Brophy appeared frequently on television and in the newspapers of the 1960s and 1970s, making her prominent both in literary circles and on the wider cultural scene. Her public reputation as an intellectual woman meant she was both revered and feared. Her oeuvre comprises both fiction and non-fiction, displaying the impressive range of Brophy's erudition and interests. All her work is suffused with her stylish crispness and verve.
Djanet Sears is a Canadian playwright, nationally recognized for her work in African-Canadian theatre. Sears has many credits in writing and editing highly acclaimed dramas such as Afrika Solo, the first stage play to be written by a Canadian woman of African descent; its sequel Harlem Duet; and The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God. The complexities of intersecting identities of race and gender are central themes in her works, as well as inclusion of songs, rhythm, and choruses shaped from West African traditions. She is also passionate about "the preservation of Black theatre history," and involved in the creation of organizations like the Obsidian Theatre and AfriCanadian Playwrights Festival.
A Handful of Dust is a novel by the British writer Evelyn Waugh. First published in 1934, it is often grouped with the author's early, satirical comic novels for which he became famous in the pre–World War II years. Some commentators regard it as a transitional work due to its serious undertones, pointing towards Waugh's Catholic postwar fiction.
Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) by George Bernard Shaw consists of a preface (The Infidel Half Century) and a series of five plays: In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden), The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day, The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170, Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000, and As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920.
Edward Santree Brophy was an American character actor and comedian, as well as an assistant director and second unit director during the 1920s. Small of build, balding, and raucous-voiced, he frequently portrayed dumb cops and gangsters, both serious and comic.
Sarah Gertrude Millin, née Liebson, was a South African author.
Man in the Attic is a 1953 mystery film directed by Hugo Fregonese. It was released in the United States on December 23 by Twentieth Century Fox. The movie is based on the 1913 novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, which fictionalizes the Jack the Ripper killings, and was previously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927, by Maurice Elvey in 1932, by John Brahm in 1944, and subsequently by David Ondaatje in 2009.
A knobkerrie, also spelled knobkerry, knobkierie, and knopkierie (Afrikaans), is a form of wooden club, used mainly in Southern Africa and Eastern Africa. Typically they have a large knob at one end and can be used for throwing at animals in hunting or for clubbing an enemy's head. For the various peoples who use them, they often have marked cultural significance. Being able to carry the knobkerrie has also had a political dimension, especially in South Africa.
Gordon Frederick Browne was an English artist and a prolific illustrator of children's books in the late 19th century and early 20th century. He was a meticulous craftsman and went to a great deal of effort to ensure that his illustrations were accurate. He illustrated six or seven books a year in addition to a huge volume of magazine illustration.
The Shaw Festival is a major Canadian theatre festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, the second largest repertory theatre company in North America. Founded in 1962, its original mandate was to stimulate interest in George Bernard Shaw and his period, and to advance the development of theatre arts in Canada.
Imdad Ali Imam Ali Kazi, also known as Imdad Ali Kazi, was a scholar, philosopher, jurist, and educationist. He is considered to be a founding father of the University of Sindh at its present location at Jamshoro. He published works of Sindhi art, literature, mysticism, education, religion and history.
Hergé, the Belgian comics author best known for The Adventures of Tintin, also created a number of short-lived, lesser-known comic strips.
Too True to Be Good (1932) is a comedy written by playwright George Bernard Shaw at the age of 76. Subtitled "A Collection of Stage Sermons by a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature", it moves from surreal allegory to the "stage sermons" in which characters discuss political, scientific and other developments of the day. The second act of the play contains a character based on Shaw's friend T. E. Lawrence.
Mabel Dove Danquah was a Gold Coast-born journalist, political activist, and creative writer, one of the earliest women in West Africa to work in these fields. As Francis Elsbend Kofigah notes in relation to Ghana's literary pioneers, "before the emergence of such strong exponents of literary feminism as Efua Sutherland and Ama Ata Aidoo, there was Mabel Dove Danquah, the trail-blazing feminist." She used various pseudonyms in her writing for newspapers from the 1930s: "Marjorie Mensah" in The Times of West Africa; "Dama Dumas" in the African Morning Post; "Ebun Alakija" in the Nigerian Daily Times; and "Akosua Dzatsui" in the Accra Evening News. Entering politics in the 1950s before Ghana's independence, she became the first woman to be elected a member of any African legislative assembly. She created the awareness and the need for self-governance through her works.
The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God is a drama written and produced by Canadian playwright Djanet Sears. The production ran from October 2003-March 2004, co-produced by Obsidian Theatre and Nightwood Theatre, and was reprised in 2015 at the National Arts Centre and Centaur Theatre. A print version of this play was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2003.
Sara Penn (1927–2020) was the owner of Knobkerry, a clothing and antiques store, gallery, cultural center, and arts space in Downtown Manhattan from the 1960s to the 1990s. Penn designed clothes that utilized global and historical textiles. Many of her clothing display strong African, East and Southeast Asian, and Indigenous American influences. She also maintained and displayed an inventory of art objects from across the globe.
