She created roles in two of Shaw's plays: Orinthia in The Apple Cart (1929), and Epifania in The Millionairess (1940) and was in the British premières of two others: Heartbreak House (1921) and Back to Methuselah (1923).

Evans became widely known for portraying haughty aristocratic women, as in two of her most famous roles as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, and Miss Western in the 1963 film of Tom Jones.

The critic of The Manchester Guardian found her diction inadequate, but otherwise approved: "Miss Edith Evans, who, without quite the invincible charm for Cressida, gave an interesting performance".

[14] In 1922 she made what J. T. Grein in The Illustrated London News called "a personal triumph" in Alfred Sutro's comedy The Laughing Lady.

The critics resorted to superlatives: [T]he main pleasure of the evening is due to Miss Edith Evans's Millamant, a part in which she definitely "arrives."

Physically she may have no more affinity with Congreve than a fiower-girl of Piccadilly Circus, but she has the art and the wit that transfigure the woman and give us the great lady, the coquette, the rogue, and the lover all in one.

She purred and challenged, mocked and melted, showing her changing moods by subtly shifting the angles of her head, neck and shoulders.

Poised and cool, like a porcelain figure in a vitrine, she used her fan – which she never opened – in the great love scene, as an instrument for attack or defence, now coquettishly pointing it upwards beneath her chin, now resting it languidly against her cheek.

[6] Marriage to someone unconnected with the theatre suited Evans, who did not share the taste of many of her colleagues for what Gielgud called "publicity, gossip and backstage intrigue".

The paper counted among her "performances of absolute assurance" in this period those in Tiger Cats (1924), The Beaux' Stratagem (1927), The Lady with a Lamp (1929), and The Apple Cart (1929) in which she played Orinthia, the king's mistress, a role written for her by Shaw.

[22] Evans's notable roles of the 1930s included Irela in Evensong (1932), Gwenny in The Late Christopher Bean (1933), four Shakespeare parts, and in 1939 Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest.

[6] The cast included Williams, Richard Burton, in his first film,[31] and Allan Aynesworth, who had created the role of Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895.

She played an elderly Welsh woman,[n 6] and was well received by reviewers, although one wondered if she was yet quite at home before the camera: "there are indeed moments when she looks as disproportionate as a life-size Rembrandt in a one-room flatlet.

The production received mixed notices, and Evans's Wishfort – "like a preposterous caricature of Queen Elizabeth"[34] – though much admired, overshadowed the rest of the cast.

Her performance divided opinion: in The Observer Ivor Brown wrote of "the glorious impact of an authentic genius at the highest level of world-theatre",[36] but the anonymous reviewer in The Times thought that she "remains, a little mysteriously, outside of the character".

[5] In May 1958 she returned to the Old Vic company, playing Queen Katharine in Henry VIII in London and then at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.

[38] In the 1961 Stratford season Evans played Queen Margaret in Richard III and appeared for the last time as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet.

[n 8] In 1964 in a production for the National Theatre, she returned to the role of Judith Bliss in Hay Fever, heading a cast that in Coward's words "could play the Albanian telephone directory".

[5] Her biggest film part of the 1960s was the central character, Mrs Ross, in The Whisperers (1967) for which she received an Oscar nomination and five major awards.

[6] Evans's last stage roles were Mrs Forrest in The Chinese Prime Minister at the Globe (1965), the Narrator in The Black Girl in Search of God at the Mermaid (1968), and Carlotta in Dear Antoine, Chichester Festival (1971).

After she found learning new roles too much, she presented an anthology of prose, poetry and music under the title Edith Evans and Friends, both in the West End and elsewhere.

[6] Her last public appearance was a BBC radio programme With Great Pleasure, a selection of her favourite works, given before an invited audience in August 1976.

In The Guardian, Nicholas de Jongh wrote of her evident frailty, "Yet she can still give the single words and phrases an imperious or serene grandeur, as in her final speaking of Richard Church's poem where she welcomed 'that summoning touch of death our neighbour'.

"[41] Bryan Forbes, who had directed Edith Evans in The Whisperers and The Slipper and the Rose, wrote her biography Ned's Girl, first published in 1977.