John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy (1867-1933), English novelist and playwright, who was one of the most popular English novelists and dramatists of the early 20th century. He was born in Kingston, Surrey, and educated at Harrow School and the University of Oxford. He was admitted to the bar in 1890 but soon abandoned law for writing. Galsworthy wrote his early works under the pen name John Sinjohn. His fiction is concerned principally with English upper middle-class life; his dramas frequently find their themes in this stratum of society, but also often deal, sympathetically, with the economically and socially oppressed and with questions of social justice. His play The Silver Box (1906) was his first work to use the device of presenting parallel and contrasted families and was extremely well received. Most of his novels deal with the history, from Victorian times through the first quarter of the 20th century, of an upper middle-class English family, the Forsytes. The principal member of the family is Soames Forsyte, who exemplifies the drive of his class for the accumulation of material wealth, a drive that often conflicts with human values. The Forsyte series includes The Man of Property (1906), the novelette “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (pub. in the collection Five Tales, 1918), In Chancery (1920), Awakening (1920), and To Let (1921). These five titles were published as The Forsyte Saga (1922). The Forsyte story was continued by Galsworthy in The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928), which were published together under the title A Modern Comedy (1929). These were followed in turn by Maid in Waiting (1931), Flowering Wilderness (1932), and Over the River (1933), published together posthumously as End of the Chapter (1934). Among the plays by Galsworthy are Strife (1909), Justice (1910), The Pigeon (1912), Old English (1924), and The Roof (1929). Galsworthy was awarded the Order of Merit in 1929 and the 1932 Nobel Prize for literature.