Bertolt Brecht's play The Mother is freely adapted from Gorky's world-famous novel of the same name. Brecht tells the story of a working-class mother who is drawn into the struggle for a Bolshevik revolution; in the character of Pelagea Vlassova, the mother of the title, Brecht draws a richly human figure who emerges as the single entirely positive major hero in all of Brecht's dramatic works.

This edition has an extensive introduction by the translator, Lee Baxandall, which gives a detailed history of the play and its first production. In addition, there are twenty-five pages of notes by Brecht himself.