SHAW, George Bernard.

£1,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God. First edition, first impression, inscribed by the author on the half-title around his Ayot St Lawrence address stamp, "Inscribed for Enid Kennard at the request of Gabriel Pascal, G. Bernard Shaw, 31st May 1945". Pascal was a Hungarian film producer noted for bringing Shaw's plays to the screen. His most successful production was Pygmalion (1938), for which Pascal received an Academy Award nomination.In 1945, at the time of the inscription, Pascal was directing Caesar and Cleopatra, an adaptation of Shaw's 1901 play of the same name. The film starred Vivien Leigh and Claude Rains and was reported to be the most expensive film ever made at the time. It was the first Shaw film made in colour and the last film version of a Shaw play during his lifetime.Shaw began writing this comic fable in South Africa in February 1932 and completed it in England that October. The controversial tale "drew on narrative models such as Voltaire's Candide and Samuel Johnson's Rasselas" (Gibbs, p. 414) Although it prompted the ire of contemporary religious groups, it proved a popular success, necessitating five further impressions in 1932, totalling 57,000 copies.

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