John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy OM (/ˈɡɔːlzwɜːrði/; 14 August 1867 – 31

January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable
John Galsworthy
works include The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921) and its sequels, A
Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1932.

Contents
Life
Career
Causes and honours
Causes
Honours
Death
Legacy
Family Born 14 August 1867
Kingston upon Thames,
Notable adaptations Surrey, England, UK
Archive Died 31 January 1933
Works (aged 65)
The Forsyte Chronicles Hampstead, London,
Plays England

Essays Occupation Writer

Collections Citizenship British
Other works Notable Nobel Prize in Literature
awards 1932
Notes and references
Signature
Further reading
External links

Life
Galsworthy was born at what is now known as Galsworthy House (then called Parkhurst)[1] on Kingston Hill
in Surrey, England, the son of John and Blanche Bailey (née Bartleet) Galsworthy. His family was prosperous
and well established, with a large property in Kingston upon Thames that is now the site of three schools:
Marymount International School, Rokeby Preparatory School, and Holy Cross Preparatory School. He
attended Harrow and New College, Oxford. He took a Second in Law (Jurisprudentia) at Oxford in 1889,[2]
then trained as a barrister and was called to the bar in 1890. However, he was not keen to begin practising law
and instead travelled abroad to look after the family's shipping business. During these travels he met Joseph
Conrad in 1893, then the first mate of a sailing-ship moored in the harbour of Adelaide, Australia, and the two
future novelists became close friends. In 1895 Galsworthy began an affair with Ada Nemesis Pearson Cooper
(1864–1956), the wife of his cousin Major Arthur Galsworthy. After her divorce ten years later, they were
married on 23 September 1905 and stayed together until his death in 1933. Before their marriage, they often
stayed clandestinely in a farmhouse called Wingstone in the village of Manaton on Dartmoor, Devon.[3] In
1908 Galsworthy took a long lease on part of the building and it was their regular second home until 1923.[3]

Career
From the Four Winds, a collection of short stories, was Galsworthy's first published work in 1897. These and
several subsequent works were published under the pen name of John Sinjohn, and it was not until The Island
Pharisees (1904) that he began publishing under his own name, probably owing to the recent death of his
father. His first full-length novel, Jocelyn, was published in an edition of 750 under the name of John Sinjohn
—he later refused to have it republished. His first play, The Silver Box (1906),[4]—in which the theft of a
prostitute's purse by a rich 'young man of good family' is placed beside the theft of a silver cigarette case from
the rich man's father's house by 'a poor devil', with very different repercussions,[5] though justice was clearly
done in each case—became a success, and he followed it up with The Man of Property (1906), the first book
of a 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 those of other writers of the period, such as George Bernard Shaw,
his plays addressed the class system and other social issues, two of the best known being Strife (1909) and The
Skin Game (1920).

He is now far better known for his novels, particularly The Forsyte
Saga, his trilogy about the eponymous family and connected lives.
These books, as with many of his other works, deal with social class,
and upper-middle class lives in particular. 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 who challenged some of the ideals
of society depicted in the preceding 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, though her previous marriage was
not as miserable as that of the character.

Causes and honours

Causes John Galsworthy

Through his writings Galsworthy campaigned for a variety of causes,

including prison reform, women's rights, and animal welfare, and also against censorship. Galsworthy was a
supporter of British involvement in the First World War. In an article for The Daily News on 31 August 1914
Galsworthy called for war on Germany to protect Belgium. Galsworthy added "What are we going to do for
Belgium — for this most gallant of little countries, ground, because of sheer loyalty, under an iron heel?" [6]
During the First World War he worked in a hospital in France as an orderly, after being passed over for
military service, and in 1917 turned down a knighthood, for which he was nominated by Prime Minister David
Lloyd George, on the precept that a writer's reward comes simply from writing itself.[7]

Galsworthy opposed the slaughter of animals and fought for animal rights.[8] He was also a humanitarian[9]
and a member of the Humanitarian League.[10] He opposed hunting and supported the League for the
Prohibition of Cruel Sports.[11]
Honours

In 1921 Galsworthy was elected as the first president of the PEN International literary club and was appointed
to the Order of Merit in 1929. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Literature, having been nominated
that same year by Henrik Schück, a member of the Swedish Academy.[12] He was too ill to attend the Nobel
Prize presentation ceremony on 10 December 1932,[13][14] and died seven weeks later. He donated the prize
money from the Nobel Prize to PEN International.[15]

Death
Galsworthy lived for the final seven years of his life at Bury in West Sussex. He died from a brain tumour at
his London home, Grove Lodge, Hampstead. In accordance with his will he was cremated at Woking, with his
ashes then being scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane,[16] but there are also memorials to him in
Highgate 'New' Cemetery[17] and in the cloisters of New College, Oxford, cut by Eric Gill.[18][19] The
popularity of his fiction waned quickly after his death, but the hugely successful black-and-white television
adaptation The Forsyte Saga in 1967 renewed interest in his work.

Legacy

A number of John Galsworthy's letters and papers are held at the University of Birmingham Special
Collections.[20]

In 2007, Kingston University opened a new building named in recognition of his local birth.[21] Galsworthy
Road in Kingston, the location of Kingston Hospital, is also named for him.

Family
Galsworthy's sister Lilian (1864–1924) was married to the German painter and lithographer Georg Sauter from
1894. With the beginning of World War I Sauter was interned as an enemy alien at Alexandra Palace and later
expelled.[22] Their son Rudolf Sauter (1895–1971) was also a painter and graphic artist, who among other
things, illustrated the works of his uncle.

Notable adaptations
The Forsyte Saga has been filmed several times:

That Forsyte Woman (1949), dir. by Compton

Bennett, an MGM adaptation in which Errol
Flynn played a rare villainous role as
Soames.[23]
The Forsyte Saga (1967 TV series), directed by
James Cellan Jones, David Giles, starring Eric
Porter, Nyree Dawn Porter, Kenneth More, and
Susan Hampshire, 26 parts.[24]
The Forsyte Saga (2002 TV series), dir. by
Christopher Menaul, starring Gina McKee,
Damian Lewis, Rupert Graves, and Corin Bury House, Galsworthy's West Sussex home.
Redgrave, 13 parts.[25]
The White Monkey was made into a silent film of the same name in 1925, directed by Phil Rosen, and starring
Barbara La Marr, Thomas Holding, and Henry Victor.[26]

The Skin Game was adapted and directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1931. It starred C.V. France, Helen Haye,
Jill Esmond, Edmund Gwenn, John Longden and Phyllis Konstam.[27]

Escape was filmed in 1930 and 1948. The latter was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starring Rex
Harrison, Peggy Cummins, and William Hartnell. The screenplay was by Philip Dunne.[23]

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, and
featured Mrs. Patrick Campbell in a rare sound film appearance.[28]

The First and the Last, a short play, was adapted as 21 Days, starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.[29]

Galsworthy's short story The Apple Tree was adapted into a radio play for Orson Welles' Lady Esther Almanac
radio series on CBS, first broadcast on 12 January 1942; the play was again produced by Welles for CBS on
The Mercury Summer Theatre of 6 September 1946. The 1988 film A Summer Story was also based on The
Apple Tree.[30]

The NBC University Theater aired radio adaptations of his plays Justice on 31 October 1948 and The
Patrician on 26 February 1950.

The Mob, adapted by John Foley in 2004 for the BBC Radio World Service.

Archive
Papers of John Galsworthy are held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham. [31]

Works

The Forsyte Chronicles

1. The Salvation of a Forsyte (The Salvation of Swithin Forsyte) (1900)
2. On Forsyte 'Change (1930) (re-published 1986 as "Uncollected Forsyte")
3. Danaë (1905–06) in Forsytes, Pendyces, and Others (1935)
4. The Man of Property (1906) – first book of The Forsyte Saga (1922)
5. The Country House,) 1907)
6. "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" (1918) – first interlude of The Forsyte Saga in Five Tales (1918)
7. In Chancery (1920) – second book of The Forsyte Saga
8. "Awakening" (1920) – second interlude of The Forsyte Saga
9. To Let (1921) – third book of The Forsyte Saga
10. The White Monkey (1924) – first book of A Modern Comedy (1929)
11. The Silver Spoon (1926) – second book of A Modern Comedy
12. "A Silent Wooing" (1927) – first Interlude of A Modern Comedy
13. "Passers-By" (1927) – second Interlude of A Modern Comedy
14. Swan Song (1928) – third book of A Modern Comedy
15. Four Forsyte Stories (1929) – "A Sad Affair", "Dog at Timothy's", "The Hondekoeter" and
"Midsummer Madness"
16. Maid in Waiting (1931) – first book of End of the Chapter (1934)
17. Flowering Wilderness (1932) – second book of End of the Chapter
18. One More River (originally Over the River) (1933) – third book of End of the Chapter

Plays
The Silver Box, 1906
Strife, 1909
Joy, 1909
Justice, 1910
The Little Dream, 1911
The Pigeon, 1912
The Eldest Son, 1912
The Fugitive, 1913
The Mob, 1914
The Little Man, 1915
A Bit o' Love, 1915
The Foundations, 1920
The Skin Game, 1920
A Family Man, 1922
Loyalties, 1922
Windows, 1922
Escape, 1926
Punch and Go, 1935

Essays
Quality, 1912,
The Inn of Tranquility, 1912,
Addresses in America, 1912
Two Essays on Conrad, 1930

Collections
The Manaton Edition, 1923–26 (30 vols.)
The Grove Edition, 1927–34 (27 Vols.)

Other works
From the Four Winds, 1897 (as John Sinjohn)
Jocelyn, 1898 (as John Sinjohn)
Villa Rubein and Other Stories, 1900 (as John Sinjohn)
A Man of Devon, 1901 (as John Sinjohn)
The Island Pharisees, 1904
A Commentary, 1908
 Fraternity, 1909
A Justification for the Censorship of Plays, 1909
A Motley, 1910
The Japanese Quince, 1910
The Spirit of Punishment, 1910
Horses in Mines, 1910
The Patrician, 1911
Moods, Songs, and Doggerels, 1912
For Love of Beasts (https://archive.org/details/forloveofbeasts00gals/page/n2/mode/2up), 1912
Treatment of Animals (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001417935), 1913
The Slaughter of Animals For Food (https://archive.org/details/slaughterofanima00gals/mode/2
up), 1913
The Dark Flower, 1913
The Freelands, 1915
A Sheaf, 1916
Beyond, 1917
Five Tales, 1918 (Contents: "The First and Last," "A Stoic," "The Apple Tree," "The Juryman,"
and "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" (the first interlude of The Forsyte Saga)
Saint's Progress, 1919
Tatterdemalion (short stories), 1920
Captures, 1923
Abracadabra, 1924
The Forest, 1924
Old English, 1924
The Show, 1925
Caravan: The Assembled Tales of John Galsworthy, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1925
Verses New and Old, 1926 (poems)
Castles in Spain, 1927
Bambi, Mar 16, 1928, wrote the foreword to Felix Salten's now famous novel
Exiled, 1929
The Roof, 1929
Soames and the Flag, 1930
The Creation of Character in Literature, 1931 (The Romanes Lecture for 1931).
Forty Poems, 1932
Autobiographical Letters of Galsworthy: A Correspondence with Frank Harris, 1933
Collected Poems, 1934
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

Notes and references

 1. Cherry, Bridget; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1983). The Buildings of England, London 2: South.
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. p. 321. ISBN 0-14-071047-7.
2. Oxford University Calendar 1895, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895, 262
3. Cooper, Robert M. (1998). The Literary Guide & Companion to Southern England (https://archiv
e.org/details/literaryguidecom00coop). Ohio University Press. pp. 323 (https://archive.org/detail
s/literaryguidecom00coop/page/323)–324. ISBN 0-8214-1225-6. Retrieved 25 September
2008.
4. Galsworthy, John (1 January 1909). "The silver box, a comedy in three acts". C. Scribner's
Sons. OCLC 8792009 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8792009).
5. Description of the plot from John Galsworthy, by George Orwell, Monde 23 March 1929
6. Playne Caroline Elisabeth. Society at War, 1914-1916. New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1931
(p.87).
7. "Masterpiece Theatre – The Forsyte Saga, Series I – Essays + Interviews – John Galsworthy
(see ¶ 6)" (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/forsyte/ei_galsworthy.html). Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS)(US). Retrieved 9 August 2015.
8. Sternlicht, Sanford. (1987). John Galsworthy. Twayne Publishers. p. 21. ISBN 978-0805769470
9. Durey, Jill Felicity. (2019). John Galsworthy (1867–1933) and Animal Welfare (https://muse.jhu.
edu/article/724692). Minnesota Review 92: 95-110.
10. Wilson, David A. H. (2015). The Welfare of Performing Animals: A Historical Perspective.
Springer. pp. 30-31. ISBN 978-3-662-45833-4
11. Tichelar, Michael. (2017). The History of Opposition to Blood Sports in Twentieth Century
England. Routledge. p. 131. ISBN 978-1-138-22543-5
12. "Nomination Database" (https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show.php?id=8574).
13. Smith, Helen (2017). An Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett, Mentor and Editor of
Literary Genius (https://books.google.com/books?id=VKskDwAAQBAJ&q=galsworthy+too+ill+t
o+attend+nobel+ceremony&pg=PA330). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374717414.
14. "Nobelprize.org" (https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1932/press.html).
www.nobelprize.org. Retrieved 16 June 2018.
15. Olga Soboleva; Angus Wrenn. "From Orientalism to Cultural Capital" (https://www.peterlang.co
m/view/9781787073951/chapter02.xhtml). Retrieved 27 April 2020.
16. Geoffrey Harvey, Galsworthy, John (1867–1933)
(http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33314), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford
University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006, accessed 29 July 2012
17. Other Writers (http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/other_writers.htm). www.poetsgraves.co.uk
18. "A History of the Workshop" (https://web.archive.org/web/20100111070935/http://www.kindersl
eyworkshop.co.uk/histmain.htm#histdkappanc). Archived from the original on 11 January 2010.
Retrieved 3 November 2009.. kindersleyworkshop.co.uk
19. MacCarthy, Fiona (1989). Eric Gill (https://archive.org/details/ericgill0000macc). Faber & Faber.
p. 276 (https://archive.org/details/ericgill0000macc/page/276). ISBN 0-571-14302-4.
20. Small, Ian (1984). "Special Collections Report: The Galsworthy Collection and Its Fate" (https://
muse.jhu.edu/article/375408/summary). English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920. 27 (3):
236–238. ISSN 1559-2715 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1559-2715).
21. "John Galsworthy building" (https://www.kingston.ac.uk/virtual-tour/penrhyn-road/john-galswort
hy/). Kingston University London. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
22. Webb, Simon (2016). British Concentration Camps: A Brief History from 1900–1975 (https://boo
ks.google.com/books?id=DVKqCwAAQBAJ&q=sauter&pg=PA50). Pen and Sword. pp. 50–51.
ISBN 978-1473846326.
23. "That Forsyte Woman (1949)" (http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/92691/That-Forsyte-Woman/artic
les.html). TCM.com.
24. "BFI Screenonline: Forsyte Saga, The (1967)" (http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1071033/).
25. Guider, Elizabeth (25 July 2004). "Review: 'The Forsyte Saga' " (https://variety.com/2004/tv/revi
ews/the-forsyte-saga-1200532035/).
26. "The White Monkey" (https://web.archive.org/web/20180603012319/https://catalog.afi.com/Cat
alog/moviedetails/8323). American Film Institute. Archived from the original (https://catalog.afi.c
om/Catalog/moviedetails/13268) on 3 June 2018. Retrieved 2 June 2018.
27. "The Skin Game (1931)" (http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/90387/The-Skin-Game/). TCM.com.
28. "One More River (1934)" (http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/85714/One-More-River/articles.html).
TCM.com.
29. "21 Days Together (1940)" (http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/414607/21-Days-Together/articles.ht
ml). TCM.com.
30. "A Summer Story" (http://www.radiotimes.com/film/dmqt7f/summer-story-a). RadioTimes.

Further reading
Reznick, Jeffrey S. (2009). John Galsworthy and Disabled Soldiers of the Great War.
Manchester University Press.

External links
Digital editions

Works by John Galsworthy in eBook form (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/john-galsworthy)

at Standard Ebooks
Works by John Galsworthy (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/850) at Project
Gutenberg
List of Works (http://noblib.internet-box.ch/NLEW.php?authorid=32)
Works by John Galsworthy (https://fadedpage.com/csearch.php?author=Galsworthy%2C%20J
ohn) at Faded Page (Canada)
Works by or about John Galsworthy (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%3
A%22Galsworthy%2C%20John%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22John%20Galsworthy%22%2
0OR%20creator%3A%22Galsworthy%2C%20John%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22John%20
Galsworthy%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Galsworthy%2C%20J%2E%22%20OR%20title%
3A%22John%20Galsworthy%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Galsworthy%2C%20John%2
2%20OR%20description%3A%22John%20Galsworthy%22%29%20OR%20%28%221867-19
33%22%20AND%20Galsworthy%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%29) at
Internet Archive
The Forsyte Chronicles (https://archive.org/details/TheForsyteFamily)
Works by John Galsworthy (https://librivox.org/author/2340) at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
Works by John Galsworthy (https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL77081A) at Open Library
Plays by John Galsworthy on Great War Theatre (https://www.greatwartheatre.org.uk/db/perso
n/287/)
John Galsworthy (https://www.nobelprize.org/laureate/605) on Nobelprize.org

Biographical entries

John Galsworthy (https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.000

1/odnb-9780198614128-e-33314) at Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Interview (https://web.archive.org/web/20100811043215/http://newbooksinhistory.com/?p=241
4) with Galsworthy biographer Jeffrey Reznick on "New Books in History."
 John Galsworthy letters (http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/remain/search.php?searchletters=authsearc
h422). Available online through Lehigh University's I Remain: A Digital Archive of Letters,
Manuscripts, and Ephemera (http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/remain/search.php?searchletters=auth
search422).
Newspaper clippings about John Galsworthy (http://purl.org/pressemappe20/folder/pe/005807)
in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Physical collections

The Papers of John Galsworthy (https://archives-manuscripts.dartmouth.edu/repositories/2/reso

urces/1547) at Dartmouth College Library

Non-profit organization positions

Preceded by International President of PEN
Succeeded by
Catherine Amy Dawson International
H. G. Wells
Scott 1921–1933

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