John Galsworthy

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Galsworthy, John (1867–1933), playwright. The English novelist and dramatist was much admired for his serious examination of the inequities of contemporary life. His critical look at the British legal system, The Silver Box (1907), was highly praised but failed to run despite the fine acting of its star, Ethel Barrymore. Nor did the labor troubles drama Strife (1909) fare any better. But Galsworthy's grim picture of prison life in Justice (1916) appeared at the same time that a young Eugene O'Neill and other American playwrights were beginning to move drama away from 19th‐century artificiality, and the play was instantly recognized by more venturesome playgoers and critics as another important breakaway from fading traditions. The work's popularity was enhanced by the brilliant performance of John Barrymore, whose stardom was then assured. Among his subsequent successes were The Skin Game (1920), Loyalties (1922), and Escape (1927).

The English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy (1867-1933) was one of the most popular writers of the early 20th century. His work explores the transitions and contrasts between pre-and post-World War I England.

Born on Aug. 14, 1867, in Coombe, Surrey, at the height of the Victorian era, John Galsworthy was educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford. He was admitted to the bar in 1890, and 8 years later, after his first novel Jocelyn appeared, he left law to continue writing. The Island Pharisees (1904) and The Man of Property (1906), which became the first novel in The Forsyte Saga, expanded his audience and his reputation.

As his popularity increased, Galsworthy published other novels of the Forsyte series: Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1918), In Chancery (1920), Awakening (1920), and To Let (1921). In The Forsyte Saga late Victorian and Edwardian England's upper-middle-class society is portrayed, dissected, and criticized. Although The Man of Property and To Let are widely separated in time, the Saga's theme and structure form a unit wherein three generations of the large, clannish Forsyte family rise and decay on realistic and symbolic levels.

The Country House (1907), Fraternity (1909), The Patrician (1911), and The Dark Flower (1913) are not novels in the sequence, but they are related to it in place and time. Galsworthy wove social history into his novels: he reproduced the values, classes, hierarchy, stability, and smugness of the Edwardian era.

After World War I Galsworthy produced another, less successful, cycle of novels about the Forsyte family in post-war England. The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928) were collectively published in 1929 as A Modern Comedy. This series is less firm than The Forsyte Saga, its characterizations are weaker, and its architectural quality is disjunctive. It reflects Galsworthy's own uncertainty about the years after the war, which were marked by a revolution in values whose outcome was uncertain. After the second cycle was completed, Galsworthy published two more novels, Maid in Waiting (1931) and Flowering Wilderness (1932).

Although Galsworthy is best known for his novels, he was also a successful playwright. He constructed his drama on a legalistic basis, and the plays typically start from a social or ethical impulse and reach a resolution after different viewpoints have been expressed. Like The Silver Box (1906) and Strife (1909), Justice (1910) is realistic, particularly in the use of dialogue that is direct and uninflated. Part of the realism is an awareness of detail and the minute symbol. That awareness is clear in the intricate symbols of The Forsyte Saga; it is less successful in the drama and his later novels because it tends to be overstated.

In Justice Galsworthy revealed himself as something of a propagandist or, according to Joseph Conrad, "a moralist." Galsworthy selected detail and character to isolate a belief or a judgment; he said, "Selection, conscious or unconscious, is the secret of art." The protagonists in his drama and his prose fiction generally typify particular viewpoints or beliefs. Explaining his method of characterization, he wrote, "In the greatest fiction the characters, or some of them, should sum up and symbolize whole streaks of human nature in a way that our friends, however well known to us, do not…. Within their belts are cinctured not only individuals but sections of mankind." He also stated that his aim was to create a fictional world that was richer than life itself.

John Galsworthy was awarded the Order of Merit in 1929 and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1932. He died at Hampstead on Jan. 31, 1933.

Further Reading

H.V. Marrot, The Life and Letters of John Galsworthy (1935), is valuable as a biographical source. Dudley Barker, The Man of Principle (1963), is the most comprehensive biography of Galsworthy. Ford Maddox Ford discusses him in Portraits from Life (1937). Other biographies are Sheila Kaye-Smith, John Galsworthy (1916); Leon Schalit, John Galsworthy: A Survey (1929); Hermon Ould, John Galsworthy (1934); and R. H. Mottram, For Some We Loved: An Intimate Portrait of Ada and John Galsworthy (1956).

Additional Sources

Dupre, Catherine, John Galsworthy: a biography, New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1976; London: Collins, 1976.

Fabes, Gilbert Henry, John Galsworthy: his first editions, points and values, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1976.

Frechet, Alec, John Galsworthy: a reassessment, Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1982.

Gindin, James Jack, The English climate: an excursion into a biography of John Galsworthy, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979.

Gindin, James Jack, John Galsworthy's life and art: an alien's fortress, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987.

Ould, Hermon, John Galsworthy: an appreciation together with a bibliography, Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1976.

Galsworthy, John (1867-1933). Galsworthy went to Harrow and New College, Oxford, began as a lawyer, but took up writing after meeting Joseph Conrad. In his plays The Silver Box (1906), Strife (1909), and Justice (1910) he showed how heavily the law could bear upon the poor. The first novel of the Forsyte family appeared in 1906 as The Man of Property, followed by In Chancery (1920) and To Let (1921), brought together in 1922 as The Forsyte Saga. Galsworthy declined a knighthood in 1918, was awarded the OM in 1929, and the Nobel prize for literature in 1932. His plays lost their topicality, but the novels remained popular and the Forsyte Saga had a resounding success when transferred to television in the 1970s.

Quotes:

"One's eyes are what one is, one's mouth is what one becomes."

"If you do not think about your future, you cannot have one."

"Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem."

"Headlines twice the size of the events."

"When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing -- deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different."

"There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible."

See more famous quotes by John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy
Born	14 August 1867(1867-08-14) Kingston, Surrey, England
Died	31 January 1933 (aged 65) London, England
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	English
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1932

John Galsworthy OM (pronounced /ˈɡɔːlz.wɜrði/) (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.

Contents 1 Life 2 Adaptations 3 Selected works 4 Notes and references 5 External links

Life

Galsworthy was born at Kingston Hill in Surrey, England into an established wealthy family, the son of John and Blanche Bailey (nee Bartleet) Galsworthy. His large Kingston upon Thames estate is now the site of three schools: Marymount International, 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 practicing law and instead travelled 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 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 Maj. Arthur Galsworthy, one of his cousins. After her divorce ten years later, the pair married on 23 September 1905 and stayed together until his death in 1933. Prior to their marriage they stayed clandestinely in a farmhouse called Wingstone in the village of Manaton on Dartmoor, Devon.^[1] From 1908 he took out a long lease on part of the building and made it their regular second home until 1923.^[1]

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 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 for 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).

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 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 even though her previous marriage was not as miserable as Irene's.

Bury House, Galsworthy's West Sussex home.

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 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 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. He was too ill to attend the Nobel awards ceremony, and died six weeks later.

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 and his ashes scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane,^[2] but there are also memorials in Highgate 'New' Cemetery^[3] and in the cloisters of New College, Oxford^[4] (the latter cut and placed in the cloisters by Eric Gill^[5][6]). 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.

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.
• BBC television drama (1967), dir. by James Cellan Jones, David Giles, starring Eric Porter, Nyree Dawn Porter, Kenneth More, Susan Hampshire, Joseph O'Conor, adaptor Lennox Philips and others, 26 parts
• Granada television drama (2002), dir. 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 C.V. 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 Cummins, 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.

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

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 Forsyte Saga, 1906-21, 1922 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 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 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 Saint's Progress, 1919 Addresses In America, 1912 The Foundations, 1920 In Chancery, 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 A Modern Comedy, 1924-1928, 1929 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 End Of the Chapter, 1931-1933, 1934 (posthumously) Maid In Waiting, 1931 Flowering Wilderness, 1932 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

Notes and references

1. ^ ^{a b} Cooper, Robert M. (1998). The Literary Guide & Companion to Southern England. Ohio University Press. pp. 323–324. ISBN 0821412256. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ihsd3FGA4dQC. Retrieved 2008-09-25. 
2. ^ http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/dnb/33314.html
3. ^ Other Writers at www.poetsgraves.co.uk
4. ^ http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=23469&PIpi=153432
5. ^ http://www.kindersleyworkshop.co.uk/histmain.htm#histdkappanc
6. ^ MacCarthy, Fiona (1989). Eric Gill. Faber & Faber. pp. 276. ISBN 0571143024. 

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Galsworthy

Wikisource has original works written by or about: John Galsworthy

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
• John Galsworthy at Find A Grave

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