Pygmalion | Historical Context

World War I
Nineteen-fourteen, the year of Pygmalion's London premiere, marked tremendous changes in British society. On July 28, the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia, setting off an international conflict due to a complicated set of alliances which had developed in Europe. Within two weeks, this conflict had erupted into a world war (known in Britain at the time as the "Great War"). By the end of World War I (as it came to be known later), 8.5 million people had been killed and 21 million wounded, including...

[The entire page is 1193 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

Summary and Analysis – Themes – Characters – And much more...