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John Galsworthy

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John Galsworthy (born Aug. 14, 1867, Kingston Hill, Surrey, Eng.—died Jan. 31, 1933, Grove Lodge, Hampstead) was an English novelist and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.

Galsworthy’s family, of Devonshire farming stock traceable to the 16th century, had made a comfortable fortune in property in the 19th century. His father was a solicitor. Educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford, Galsworthy was called to the bar in 1890. With a view to specializing in marine law, he took a voyage around the world, during which he encountered Joseph Conrad , then mate of a merchant ship. They became lifelong friends. Galsworthy found law uncongenial and took to writing. For his first works, From the Four Winds (1897), a collection of short stories, and the novel Jocelyn (1898), both published at his own expense, he used the pseudonym John Sinjohn. The Island Pharisees (1904) was the first book to appear under his own name.

The Man of Property (1906) began the novel sequence known as The Forsyte Saga, by which Galsworthy is chiefly remembered; others in the same series are “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (1918, in Five Tales ), In Chancery (1920), Awakening (1920), and To Let (1921). The saga chronicles the lives of three generations of a large, upper middle-class family at the turn of the century. Having recently risen to wealth and success in the profession and business world, the Forsytes are tenaciously clannish and anxious to increase their wealth. The novels imply that their desire for property is morally wrong. The saga intersperses diatribes against wealth with lively passages describing character and background. In The Man of Property, Galsworthy attacks the Forsytes through the character of Soames Forsyte, a solicitor who considers his wife Irene as a mere form of property. Irene finds her husband physically unattractive and falls in love with a young architect who dies. The other two novels of the saga, In Chancery and To Let, trace the subsequent divorce of Soames and Irene, the second marriages they make, and the eventual romantic entanglements of their children. The story of the Forsyte family after World War I was continued in The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928), collected in A Modern Comedy (1929). Galsworthy’s other novels include The Country House (1907), The Patrician (1911), and The Freelands (1915).

Galsworthy was also a successful dramatist, his plays, written in a naturalistic style, usually examining some controversial ethical or social problem . They include The Silver Box (1906), which, like many of his other works, has a legal theme and depicts a bitter contrast of the law’s treatment of the rich and the poor; Strife (1909), a study of industrial relations; Justice (1910), a realistic portrayal of prison life that roused so much feeling that it led to reform; and Loyalties (1922), the best of his later plays. He also wrote verse.

In 1905 Galsworthy married Ada Pearson, the divorced wife of his first cousin, A.J. Galsworthy. Galsworthy had, in secret, been closely associated with his future wife for about ten years before their marriage. Irene in The Forsyte Saga is to some extent a portrait of Ada Galsworthy, although her first husband was wholly unlike Soames Forsyte.

Galsworthy’s novels, by their abstention from complicated psychology and their greatly simplified social viewpoint, became accepted as faithful patterns of English life for a time. Galsworthy is remembered for this evocation of Victorian and Edwardian upper middle-class life and for his creation of Soames Forsyte, a dislikable character who nevertheless compels the reader’s sympathy.

A television serial of The Forsyte Saga by the British Broadcasting Corporation achieved immense popularity in Great Britain in 1967 and later in many other nations, especially the United States , reviving interest in an author whose reputation had plummeted after his death.

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• John Galsworthy - Facts

John Galsworthy

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

John Galsworthy The Nobel Prize in Literature 1932

Born: 14 August 1867, Kingston Hill, United Kingdom

Died: 31 January 1933, London, United Kingdom

Residence at the time of the award: United Kingdom

Prize motivation: “for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga ”

Language: English

Prize share: 1/1

John Galsworthy came from a wealthy English family with businesses in many countries. He studied law but abandoned his plans to become a lawyer and instead traveled widely to look after the family’s businesses. During his travels he became acquainted with the writer Joseph Conrad, who became a close friend. Returning from his travels, he published two collections of short stories under the pseudonym John Sinjohn before his breakthrough with the novel The Island Pharisees, which was published under his own name.

Today Galsworthy is mainly remembered for The Forsyte Saga series. His contemporaries highly regarded him as a playwright, whose plays often dealt with social issues about class and justice. His breakthrough as a novelist came with publication of The Island Pharisees, which criticized the egotism of England’s powerful elite. With The Forsyte Saga–consisting of three novels and two short stories–he went from being a radical critic of contemporary culture with satire as a primary weapon to delineating increasingly complex character portraits with greater warmth.

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John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy (August 14, 1867 – January 31, 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. Galsworthy's novels addressed the class system in England, especially the rise of the merchant class, or "new money," and its relations to the aristocracy , or "old money." In the wake of the Industrial Revolution and urbanization, Galsworthy's works reflected the inevitable conflicts that arose during the transition from a more pastoral society to a modern one. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1932.

• 1 Biography
• 2 Literary Works
• 4 Adaptations
• 5 Selected works
• 7 References
• 8 External links

Galsworthy was born at Kingston Hill in Surrey, England , into an established wealthy family, the son of John and Blanche Bailey (nee Bartleet) Galsworthy. He attended Harrow and New College, Oxford, training as a barrister and was called to the bar in 1890. However, he was not interested in practicing law and instead traveled abroad to look after the family's shipping business interests. During these travels he met Joseph Conrad , then the first mate of a sailing-ship moored in the harbor of Adelaide, Australia, and the two future novelists became close friends. In 1895, Galsworthy began an affair with Ada Nemesis Pearson, the wife of one of his cousins. After her divorce the pair eventually married on September 23, 1905, and stayed together until his death in 1933. During World War I , he worked in a hospital in France as an orderly after being passed over for military service. John Galsworthy lived for the final seven years of his life at Bury in West Sussex. He died from a brain tumor at his London home, Grove Lodge, Hampstead. In accordance with his will he was cremated at Woking, and his ashes scattered over the South Downs from the air. [1] There is also a memorial in Highgate "New" Cemetery. [2]

Literary Works

From the Four Winds was Galsworthy's first published work in 1897, a collection of short stories. These, and several subsequent works, were published under the pen name John Sinjohn, and it would not be until The Island Pharisees (1904) that he would begin publishing under his own name, probably owing to the death of his father. His first play, The Silver Box (1906), became a success, and he followed it up with The Man of Property (1906), the first in the Forsyte trilogy. Although he continued writing both plays and novels, it was as a playwright that he was mainly appreciated at the time. Along with other writers of the time, such as Shaw , his plays addressed the class system and social issues; two of his best known plays were Strife (1909) and The Skin Game (1920).

Over time his reputation shifted; he is now far better known for his novels and particularly The Forsyte Saga, the first of three trilogies of novels about the eponymous family and connected lives. These books, as with many of his other works, dealt with class, and in particular upper-middle class lives. Although sympathetic to his characters, he highlights their insular, snobbish, and acquisitive attitudes and their suffocating moral codes. He is viewed as one of the first writers of the Edwardian era; challenging in his works some of the ideals of society depicted in the proceeding literature of Victorian England. The depiction of a woman in an unhappy marriage furnishes another recurring theme in his work. The character of Irene in The Forsyte Saga is drawn from Ada Pearson even though her previous marriage was not as miserable as Irene's.

His work is often less convincing when it deals with the changing face of wider British society and how it affects people of the lower social classes. Through his writings he campaigned for a variety of causes, including prison reform, women's rights, animal welfare, and censorship, but these have limited appeal outside the era in which they were written.

He was elected as the first president of the International PEN literary club in 1921, was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1929—after earlier turning down a knighthood—and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932.

The popularity of his fiction waned quickly after his death, but the hugely successful adaptation of The Forsyte Saga in 1967 renewed interest in the writer.

A number of John Galsworthy's letters and papers are held at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

Adaptations

The Forsyte Saga has been filmed several times:

• That Forsyte Woman (1949), directed by Compton Bennett, an MGM adaptation in which Errol Flynn played a rare villainous role, as Soames.
• BBC television drama (1967), directed by James Cellan Jones, David Giles, starring Eric Porter, Nyree Dawn Porter, Kenneth More, Susan Hampshire, Joseph O'Conor, adapted by Lennox Philips and others, 26 parts.
• Granada television drama (2002), directed by Christopher Menaul, starring Gina McKee, Damian Lewis, Rupert Graves, Corin Redgrave, 13 parts.

The Skin Game was adapted and directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1931. It starred VC France, Helen Haye, Jill Esmond, Edmund Gwenn, John Longden.

Escape was filmed in 1930 and 1948. The latter was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starring Rex Harrison, Peggy Cummings, William Hartnell. The screenplay was by Philip Dunne.

One More River (a film version of Galsworthy's Over the River ) was filmed by James Whale in 1934. The film starred Frank Lawton, Colin Clive (one of Whale's most frequently used actors), and Diana Wynyard. It also featured Mrs. Patrick Campbell in a rare sound film appearance.

Selected works

• From The Four Winds, 1897 (as John Sinjohn)
• Jocelyn, 1898 (as John Sinjohn)
• Villa Rubein, 1900 (as John Sinjohn)
• A Man Of Devon, 1901 (as John Sinjohn)
• The Island Pharisees, 1904
• The Silver Box, 1906 (his first play)
• The Man Of Property, 1906
• (interlude) Indian Summer of a Forsyte, 1918
• In Chancery, 1920
• (interlude) Awakening, 1920
• To Let, 1921
• The Country House, 1907
• A Commentary, 1908
• Fraternity, 1909
• A Justification For The Censorship Of Plays, 1909
• Strife, 1909
• Justice, 1910
• A Motley, 1910
• The Spirit Of Punishment, 1910
• Horses In Mines, 1910
• The Patrician, 1911
• The Little Dream, 1911
• The Pigeon, 1912
• The Eldest Son, 1912
• Moods, Songs, And Doggerels, 1912
• For Love Of Beasts, 1912
• The Inn Of Tranquility, 1912
• The Dark Flower, 1913
• The Fugitive, 1913
• The Mob, 1914
• The Freelands, 1915
• The Little Man, 1915
• A Bit's Love, 1915
• A Sheaf, 1916
• The Apple Tree, 1916
• Beyond, 1917
• Five Tales, 1918
• Saint's Progress, 1919
• Addresses In America, 1912
• The Foundations, 1920
• Awakening, 1920
• The Skin Game, 1920
• To Let, 1920
• A Family Man, 1922
• The Little Man, 1922
• Loyalties, 1922
• Windows, 1922
• Captures, 1923
• Abracadabra, 1924
• The Forest, 1924
• Old English, 1924
• The Show, 1925
• Escape, 1926
• Verses New And Old, 1926
• Castles In Spain, 1927
• The White Monkey, 1924
• (Interlude) a Silent Wooing, 1927
• The Silver Spoon, 1926
• (Interlude) Passers By, 1927
• Swan Song, 1928
• Two Forsyte Interludes, 1927
• The Manaton Edition, 1923-26 (collection, 30 vols.)
• Exiled, 1929
• The Roof, 1929
• On Forsyte Change, 1930
• Two Essays On Conrad, 1930
• Soames And The Flag, 1930
• The Creation Of Character In Literature, 1931 (The Romanes Lecture for 1931).
• Maid In Waiting, 1931
• Forty Poems, 1932
• Flowering Wilderness, 1932
• Over the River, 1933
• Autobiographical Letters Of Galsworthy: A Correspondence With Frank Harris, 1933
• The Grove Edition, 1927-34 (collection, 27 Vols.)
• Collected Poems, 1934
• One More River, 1933 (originally the English edition was called Over the River)
• Punch And Go, 1935
• The Life And Letters, 1935
• The Winter Garden, 1935
• Forsytes, Pendyces And Others, 1935
• Selected Short Stories, 1935
• Glimpses And Reflections, 1937
• Galsworthy's Letters To Leon Lion, 1968
• Letters From John Galsworthy 1900-1932, 1970
• ↑ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, John Galsworthy. Retrieved November 9, 2007.
• ↑ Poets' Graves, Other Writers. Retrieved November 9, 2007.

References ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Marrot, Harold Vincent. The Life and Letters of John Galsworthy. C. Scribner's Sons, 1936.
• Mottram, R. H. John Galsworthy. British Council by Longmans, Green, 1952.
• Sternlicht, Stanford V. John Galsworthy. Twayne Publishers, 1987. ISBN 9780805769470

External links

All links retrieved August 3, 2022.

• John Galsworthy at Find A Grave
• Works by John Galsworthy . Project Gutenberg
• The Man of Property LibriVox recording

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John Galsworthy

(1867—1933) novelist and playwright

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(1867–1933)

British novelist and playwright. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Literature, having been appointed to the OM in 1929.

The son of a prosperous lawyer, Galsworthy was born in Coombe, Surrey, educated at Harrow, and took a degree in law at New College, Oxford (1889). Called to the bar in 1890, he specialized in marine jurisprudence. To gain experience he travelled (1893) to the Far East on a merchant ship, encountering Joseph Conrad, who later became his friend.

Galsworthy's first novels and stories were published under the pseudonym John Sinjohn: From the Four Winds (1897), Jocelyn (1898), Villa Rubein (1900), and The Island Pharisees (1904). His first major success, however, was with The Man of Property (1906), which later became the first volume in The Forsyte Saga, first published in its complete form in 1922 (the other volumes are In Chancery, 1920; and To Let, 1921). In the Forsyte novels Galsworthy cast a critical eye over the new monied class in Victorian and Edwardian society. The trilogy A Modern Comedy (1929), comprising The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928), embodied a more sympathetic view.

In 1906 Galsworthy enjoyed a triumph with his first play, The Silver Box. Like the plays that followed it – Strife (1909), Justice (1910), and The Skin Game (1920) among them – The Silver Box succeeded by reason of its naturalistic dialogue and straightforward construction, with the dramatist content to let his characters act out their own destinies without his obviously taking sides or manipulating them to expound a message. Galsworthy's Collected Plays appeared in 1929. Among his posthumously published works was a volume of poems (1934). The theme of Justice had demonstrated Galsworthy's concern with the plight of prisoners. He also took an active interest in various literary causes, becoming the first president of PEN (International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists) when it was founded in 1921 and president of the English Association (1924).

From:   Galsworthy, John   in  Who's Who in the Twentieth Century »

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John Galsworthy (1867–1933)

…the only efficient, the only decent prayer, is Action . John Galsworthy, ‘Philosophy of Life’ in Glimpses and Reflections (1937)

Best remembered today for The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy was admired during his lifetime as a playwright and humanitarian, whose own privilege he turned towards helping others. Raised in a wealthy, Anglican home, Galsworthy turned away from religion and embraced instead a richly humanist philosophy, championing causes from prison reform to press freedom. He was the first President of PEN International 1921–33, and awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.

Humanism is the creed of those who believe that, within the circle of the enwrapping mystery, men’s fate is in their own hands… John Galsworthy, ‘Six Novelists in Profile’ (1924) in Castles in Spain & Other Screeds (1927)

John Galsworthy was born in Kingston, Surrey in 1867 to John and Blanche Galsworthy. His father was a lawyer and later property developer, who accrued substantial wealth through the building of grand homes for his family on Kingston’s then rural Coombe Estate, which were later sold to wealthy bankers and aristocrats. John junior studied law at Oxford but rejected a legal career, finding success as a writer, encouraged by his independent-minded sister Lilian . They both pursued literary and creative lives in spite of the expectations, and constraints, of their orthodox upbringing. Lilian’s influence on her brother has been oft noted, including her role in prompting his examination – and ultimately rejection – of orthodox ideas. As Galsworthy’s biographer Catherine Dupré has written:

Whether alone, without the constant spur and stimulation of Lilian’s active mind, John would have arrived at what was then unconventional and generally unacceptable, is doubtful. Nor do we know at what point he finally discarded Christianity in favour of the humanistic view of life that was to dominate his thinking and his writing for the rest of his life… The barometer of Galsworthy’s philosophy swung dramatically away from any orthodox religion or creed: good was here and now, suffering was here and now, and a man’s work, and most particularly his, was to crusade against suffering; the poor were no longer to be poor, prisoners were to be happy in their prisons, wives content in their marriages; animals were no longer to be ill-treated, even cage birds, liberated, were to sing for ever in a new freedom. It was a naive conception; nevertheless it was one that was deeply felt… Catherine Dupré in John Galsworthy: a Biography (1976)

Much has been written about Galsworthy’s beliefs and opinions as represented in his novels, and his apparent dismay with the political system: he declared himself to be ‘neither Tory, Liberal or Socialist’ but his personal actions and life choices show his compassionate humanism. Galsworthy himself said:

Humanism is the creed of those who believe that, within the circle of the enwrapping mystery, men’s fate is in their own hands, for better for worse… a faith which is becoming for modern man— perhaps—the only possible faith. John Galsworthy, ‘Six Novelists in Profile’ (1924) in Castles in Spain & Other Screeds (1927)

Galsworthy had a decade-long affair with his cousin’s wife Ada, and once she was divorced, they married – in a register office in 1905. Their marriage lasted until his death. In a 1902 letter to his friend Edward Garnett, Galsworthy described having officiated at a ceremony ‘which always gives me the squirms (Church marriages are an abomination).’ Clergymen appear in several of his novels, with critic Alec Fréchet noting that these characters are typically ‘ill placed to preach acceptance of suffering, not being among those of suffer most’, and frequently ‘narrow-minded, selfish, even malevolent.’ Nor could Galsworthy forgive the Church of England for its stance on divorce.

Galsworthy was deeply conflicted by the outpouring of patriotic fervour at the outbreak of war in 1914. He was unable to justify a national military engagement, and though he considered himself a patriot he abhorred the war. His compromise was offering practical and financial support to help alleviate the suffering. He and his wife helped Belgian refugees to come to England in 1914, arranging places for them to live in Devon. In 1917 he lent part of his large house in Regent’s Park to the Red Cross for the treatment of wounded soldiers. He and his wife also spent time in France working with the Red Cross. Galsworthy gave every penny he made through his writing to the humanitarian war effort. Biographer James Gindin has suggested that ‘offering financial and practical support was a substitute for either whole heartedly endorsing the Government or adopting an unequivocal position of pacifism.’

The internment of his brother-in-law Georg, and later his young nephew Rudolf, affected him directly, as he witnessed the conditions in which they were detained and how it affected his sister for the rest of her life. Galsworthy campaigned unsuccessfully for their release, leading him to campaign also for prison reform. He became deeply involved in campaigns for improved animal welfare, and was a member of the Humanitarian League .

In 1921, Galsworthy became the first President of the newly formed PEN: an association of ‘Poets, Essayists, Novelists’, which would become PEN International, a global champion of human rights and literary freedom. At the first PEN dinner, Galsworthy declared:

We writers are in some sort trustees for human nature. If we are narrow and prejudiced, we harm the human race. And the better we know each other, the greater the chance of human happiness in a world not, as yet, too happy. John Galsworthy, 5 October 1921, quoted in ‘ Literature knows no frontiers: celebrating 100 years of PEN International ’

In 1932, Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, commended for the ‘spirit of idealism, that warm sympathy and true humanity that radiate from all his writings’. He was too ill to attend the ceremony, and died on 31 January 1933, in his 66th year. Galsworthy made it clear, in the lines of a poem found among his things, that he wished to be cremated, not buried, upon his death. This was honoured and his ashes were scattered from a plane over the South Downs.

Scatter my ashes! Let them be free to the air Soaked in the sunlight and rain Scatter, with never a care Whether you find them again. John Galsworthy, ‘Scatter My Ashes’, inscribed ‘to go with my Will’, in Galsworthy the Man by Rudolf Sauter (1967)

Life for those who still have vital instinct in them is good enough in itself, even if it lead to nothing further… And as for the parts we play, courage and kindness seem the elemental virtues, for between them they include all that is real in any of the others, alone make human life worth while and bring an inner happiness. John Galsworthy, ‘Faith of a Novelist’ (1926) in Castles in Spain & Other Screeds (1927)

A deeply compassionate man, who believed firmly in the writer’s responsibility to encourage empathy and humaneness, John Galsworthy’s life and works have much to offer humanists today. Indeed, writing of his uncle’s final wish to have his ashes scattered over the countryside he loved, Rudolf Sauter described Galsworthy’s distinctly humanist afterlife.

There, by the gorse-fragrant hedge on the sun-baked turf where rabbits scampered and the sheep crop, where, riding every day, he used to look out across the beech woods to the far sea there on the high downs above his Sussex home, his ashes lie. And if the birds and the beasts have used them as he wished, and the winds hold them in fee, yet the qualities from which he never departed in life live on, in the characters he created out of his love of beauty, his understanding, his humanity and compassion, and the essential integrity of his nature. Rudolf Sauter, Galsworthy the Man: An Intimate Portrait (1967)

John Galsworthy | Nobel Prize

Our History | PEN International

Catherine Dupré, John Galsworthy: a Biography (1976)

Alec Fréchet, John Galsworthy: A Reassessment (1982)

James Gindin, John Galsworthy’s Life and Art: An Alien’s Fortress (1987)

Jill F. Durey, ‘Alien Internment in John Galsworthy’s The Bright Side and The Dog it was that Died’ in Literature and History 30 (1) (2021)

Edward Garnett, Letters From John Galsworthy 1900-1932 (1934)

By Liz Goodacre

• Lilian Sauter
• Thomas Hardy
• The Humanitarian League
• PEN Membership Certificate

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