Book excerpt: * Beautifully illustrated with atmospheric paintings by renowned artists, Pygmalion is a brilliant play that features professor of phonetics Henry Higgins making a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence.* Just as accessible and enjoyable for today's readers as it would have been when first published, the play is one of the great works of English literature and continues to be widely read throughout the world.* This meticulous edition from Heritage Illustrated Publishing is a faithful reproduction of the original text and is enhanced with images of classic works of art carefully selected by our team of professional editors.