George Bernard Shaw
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Bernard Shaw (July 26, 1856 - November 2, 1950) was an Irish writer. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.
His best known works are his plays, some of which were made into movies.
Saint Joan was made into a movie in 1957.
Pygmalion was made into a movie two times. The first Pygmalion movie won an Academy Award in 1938. Later, the play was made into a musical called My Fair Lady. The movie based on the musical won 8 Academy Awards in 1964.
Shaw also wrote musical criticism using the pseudonym (made-up name) Corno di Bassetto (which means: Basset horn).
Shaw was a vegetarian, did not drink alcohol, and spoke strongly about socialism and women's rights. He was also interested in making the English language easier to spell.
In his will, he left money to be used to make a new alphabet. He wanted the new alphabet to have at least 40 letters, so that each sound could be spelled with just one letter.
In 1962, his play Androcles and the Lion was printed in a two-language version. On one side of the book, the text is written using regular English. On the other side, it is written using the Shaw alphabet.
