A novel polarized light-guide plate (LGP) for the illumination of liquid crystal display is proposed in this paper. For the substrate of the LGP, stress-induced birefringence is introduced to achieve the polarization state conversion. An aluminum sub-wavelength grating (SWG) is designed on the top surface as a polarizing beam-splitter (PBS). The structure of the novel LGP is optimized for three wavelengths of LEDs: 625nm, 533nm and 452nm, and high efficiencies of polarization conversion are obtained. The backlight system with the designed LGP does not require prism sheets and quarter wavelength plate. The backlight with the novel LGP achieved large gain in energy efficiency, and the peak luminous intensity is about 2 times higher than that of a conventional backlight.