Pygmalion is the play by George Bernard Shaw on which the Musical My Fair Lady is based. Pygmalion is based in turn on a Greek mythological character of the same name who falls in love with a statue he created and gets his wish for it to come to life.
While there are many similarities between the play and the musical - Professor Henry Higgens, an expert in phonetics, attempts to transform a lowly flower girl into a duchess, and they butt heads in amusing ways -- it is not a romance. When producers began adding happy endings, or at least hints of them, to his play's production, Shaw wrote and afterward explaining all the reasons Eliza Doolittle and Higgens could not have been married, whom she did marry, and how everyone ended up.
So while it was unsatisfying at first that there was no romance in the play, Shaw's reasons made sense, and while this Pygmalion didn't fall in love with his creation, he did feel he had brought her to full womanhood when she stood up to him and made her own decisions.
SparkNotes suggests Shaw was trying to deconstruct the typical fairy tale. If he was, he did a good job. Henry Higgens is no Prince Charming. He’s gruff, conceited, ill-mannered and self-centered. Though Eliza is transformed, she’s not exactly a Cinderella. And their ending, if not “happily ever after,” is probably more realistic (“What is Eliza fairly sure to do when she is placed between Freddy and Higgins? Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins’s slippers or to a lifetime of Freddy fetching hers?”)
Other sources say Pygmalion is a satire of the social classes, and I can see that angle, too, especially in the subplot with Eliza’s father. And though each class is shown to be ridiculous in some ways, Shaw makes some poignant observations as well.
Overall it was a fun read. Some readers will want to know that there is a smattering of "damns" in it.