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JOHN GALSWORTHY

Kingston, 1867 - London, 1933) British novelist and playwright,

winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize for Literature. The Galsworthy

family, from a Devonshire lineage of farmers dating back to the
16th century, had made a considerable fortune during the
century. The son of a lawyer, he was educated at Harrow and at

New College Oxford, Galsworthy. He entered the bar association
in 1890.

Specialized in Maritime Law, he made a trip around the world
during which he met Joseph Conrad, then officer of a merchant
ship, whose friendship he maintained throughout his life.
Galsworthy realized that his adventurous character was
incompatible with the legal profession. His first literary works
were From the Four Winds (1897), a collection of short stories,

and the novel Jocelyn (1898), both paid for by himself while still

using the pseudonym John Sinjohn. The Pharisees on the Island
(1904) was the first book signed under his own name.

His works mainly portray the life of the English bourgeoisie; Her
dramas usually focus on this social stratum, although sometimes

they also address the poor and social justice issues. From his first
time as a novelist are La casa rural (1907), El Patricio (1911), and
Tierras libre (1915). The Owner (1906) was the first in a series of

novels known as The Forsythe Saga, which made him famous;
Other titles of the same are El veranillo de San Martín de un
Forsythe (1918, consisting of five stories), En el tribunal (1920),
Despertar (1920), and Se renta (1921). The saga, published in its

entirety in 1922, describes the lives of three generations of a vast
upper-middle-class family in the late 1800s.

In The Owner, Galsworthy attacks the Forsythe through the
character of Soames Forsythe, a lawyer who considers his wife

Irene one of his properties. Irene finds her husband physically

unattractive and falls in love with a young architect who dies. The
other two novels in the saga deal with the divorce of Soames and
Irene, their second marriages, and the love affairs of their

children. The story of the Forsythe family after World War I is
continued in The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926),
and The Swan Song (1928), brought together under the title A

Modern Comedy (1929) . These are followed, in turn, by Youth
Hopes (1931), Flowery meadow (1932) and Beyond the river
(1933), published posthumously under the title of The End of the
Chapter (1934).

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