John Galsworthy

For the diplomat see John Galsworthy (diplomat)

John Galsworthy
Born	(1867-08-14)14 August 1867 Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, UK
Died	31 January 1933(1933-01-31) (aged 65) London, England, UK
Occupation	Writer
Citizenship	British
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1932

John Galsworthy OM (/ˈɡɔːlzwɜrði/; 14 August 1867 – 31 January 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. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932.

Life

John Galsworthy was born at Kingston Hill in Surrey, England, the son of John and Blanche Bailey (née Bartleet) Galsworthy. His family was wealthy and well established, with a large estate in Kingston upon Thames that is now the site of three schools: Marymount International School, Rokeby Preparatory School, and Holy Cross. He attended Harrow and New College, Oxford, training 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, 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 married 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. From 1908 he took out a long lease on part of the building and made it their regular second home until 1923.

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 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 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), – 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 – 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 those of other writers of the time, such as George Bernard Shaw, his plays addressed the class system and social issues, two of the best known being Strife (1909) and The Skin Game (1920).

John Galsworthy

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, 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.

Through his writings he campaigned for a variety of causes, including prison reform, women's rights, animal welfare, and the opposition of censorship. During World War I he worked in a hospital in France as an orderly after being passed over for military service. He was elected as the first president of the PEN International 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. He was too ill to attend the Nobel awards ceremony, and died six weeks later of a stroke.^{[citation needed]}

John 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, but there are also memorials in Highgate 'New' Cemetery and in the cloisters of New College, Oxford (the latter cut and placed in the cloisters by Eric Gill). The popularity of his fiction waned quickly after his death but the hugely successful adaptation of The Forsyte Saga in 1967 renewed interest in his work.

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

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

Adaptations

Bury House, Galsworthy's West Sussex home.

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.
• BBC television drama (1967), directed by James Cellan Jones, David Giles, starring Eric Porter, Nyree Dawn Porter, Kenneth More, and Susan Hampshire, 26 parts
• Granada television drama (2002), dir. by Christopher Menaul, starring Gina McKee, Damian Lewis, Rupert Graves, and Corin Redgrave, 13 parts.^{[citation needed]}

The Skin Game was adapted and directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1931. It starred C.V. France, Helen Haye, Jill Esmond, Edmund Gwenn, and John Longden.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

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), Diana Wynyard, and featured Mrs. Patrick Campbell in a rare sound film appearance.^{[citation needed]}

The First and the Last, a short play, was adapted as 21 Days, starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

The Patrician was broadcast on NBC University Theater of the Air radio show on 24 February 1950.^{[citation needed]}

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 – first book of The Forsyte Saga (1922)
• The Country House, 1907
• A Commentary, 1908
• Fraternity, 1909
• A Justification for the Censorship of Plays, 1909
• Strife, 1909
• Fraternity, 1909
• Joy, 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
• Quality, 1912
• Moods, Songs, and Doggerels, 1912
• For Love of Beasts, 1912
• The Inn of Tranquillity, 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
• Indian Summer of a Forsyte, 1918 – first interlude of The Forsyte Saga
• Saint's Progress, 1919
• Addresses in America, 1912
• The Foundations, 1920
• In Chancery, 1920 – second book of The Forsyte Saga
• Awakening, 1920 – second interlude of The Forsyte Saga
• The Skin Game, 1920

• To Let, 1921 – third book of The Forsyte Saga
• A Family Man, 1922
• The Little Man, 1922
• Loyalties, 1922
• Windows, 1922
• Captures, 1923
• Abracadabra, 1924
• The Forest, 1924
• Old English, 1924
• The White Monkey, 1924 – first book of A Modern Comedy (1929)
• The Show, 1925
• Escape, 1926
• The Silver Spoon, 1926 – second book of A Modern Comedy
• Verses New and Old, 1926
• Castles in Spain, 1927
• A Silent Wooing, 1927 – first Interlude of A Modern Comedy
• Passers By, 1927 – second Interlude of A Modern Comedy
• Swan Song, 1928 – third book of A Modern Comedy
• 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 – first book of End of the Chapter (1934)
• 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
• Flowering Wilderness, 1932 – second book of End of the Chapter
• One More River (originally Over the River), 1933 – third book of End of the Chapter
• 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

Further reading

• Jeffrey S. Reznick, 2009 John Galsworthy and Disabled Soldiers of the Great War Manchester University Press.

External links

Sources

• Works by or about John Galsworthy at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by John Galsworthy at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• The Man of Property LibriVox recording
• The Forsyte Chronicles at eBooks@Adelaide

Biographical

• John Galsworthy at Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Works by John Galsworthy on Open Library at the Internet Archive
• Interview with Galsworthy biographer Jeffrey Reznick on "New Books in History."

Non-profit organization positions
Preceded by Catherine Amy Dawson Scott	International President of PEN International 1921–1933	Succeeded by H. G. Wells