Subject
Upper class -- England -- Drama Books
Best books
Bernard Shaw
Heartbreak House
"Heartbreak House" by Bernard Shaw is a play written during the First World War and published in 1919. Set in a ship-shaped house, the work brings together an eccentric inventor, his self-absorbed daughters, and their guests for a disastrous dinner party. As romantic entanglements collide with political irresponsibility, Shaw depicts a society adrift—cultured yet rudderless, detached from reality as war literally drops from the sky. This darkly comic fantasia reflects Shaw's disillusionment with Britain, contrasting elegant indifference against aggressive philistinism in a nation heading toward catastrophe.
Bernard Shaw
Heartbreak House
Wikipedia page about this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbreak_House
Arthur Wing Pinero
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray: A Play in Four Acts
"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray: A Play in Four Acts" by Arthur Wing Pinero is a problem play first produced in 1893. When respectable widower Aubrey Tanqueray announces his engagement to Paula Jarman, a woman with a scandalous past, his upper-class friends are horrified. As the marriage unfolds, the couple struggles to bridge the gap between Paula and Tanqueray's proper young daughter, Ellean. But when a shocking connection from Paula's past emerges, it threatens to destroy the fragile bonds holding the family together, leading toward an inevitable tragic conclusion.
Recently surfaced classics