John Galsworthy

1867-1933. English novelist and playwright. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.

Life

Galsworthy was born on 14 August, 1867 at Kingston Hill in Surrey, England. In the 19th century, his middle-class family became rich because they bought property. His father worked as a solicitor. After having finished Harrow School, Galsworthy began to study law at New College, Oxford and he was called to the bar in 1890. However, he recognized that law was not his vocation. Joseph Conrad, the author’s friend whom he met during his voyage around the world, and Ada, Galsworthy’s wife, encouraged him to start writing at the age of 27.

Work

Galsworthy created poetry, short stories, plays and fiction. At the beginning of his career, the author used a pseudonym, John Sinjohn. Such works as From the Four Winds (1897), a collection of short stories, and the novel Jocelyn (1898) were published under the aforementioned name. Galsworthy regarded The Island Pharisees (1904) as his first important work. The author’s first play, The Silver Box (1906), proved to be successful and was produced by the prestigious Vedrenne-Barker partnership, later called the Royal Court Theatre. This work discusses how the poor were unfairly treated in contrast to the rich. Galsworthy also wrote Strife (1909), Justice (1910), The Mob (1914) and The Skin Game (1920). Strife deals with the confrontation of capital and labour. Justice realistically depicts the prison life and results in a correspondence and several meetings with Winston Churchill who later carries out reforms for the treatment of prisoners in solitary confinement. The Mob and The Skin Game mirror Galsworthy’s reaction to World War I.

Galsworthy is chiefly known for his novel sequence, The Forsyte Saga. The saga focuses on the lives of three generations of a large, property-worshipping, upper middle-class family. In the novels, Galsworthy criticizes, from the moral point of view, people’s aspirations to attain property. The roman fleuve consists of “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (1915), In Chancery (1920), “Awakening” (1920), and To Let (1921). After World War I, The Forsyte Saga was expanded by A Modern Comedy (1929) that included The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), A Silent Wooing, Passerby (1927) and Swan Song (1928). This collection of novels shows Galsworthy’s negative attitude towards modernism that he regarded as a nihilistic culture. His wish to write the ‘three-decker’ novel also hints at his preference for the Victorian novel rather than “the modernism’s search for new forms to document new experience” (Shaffer 149).

One year before his death in 1933, Galsworthy, who is well-known for the depiction of Victorian and Edwardian upper middle-class life, got a Nobel Prize in Literature.

After the Author’s Death

Galsworthy is considered to be a very human and compassionate person standing up for “abolition of the censorship of plays, the minimum wage, women’s suffrage, divorce law reform, prison reform, slaughterhouse reform, and the human treatment of animals” (Shaffer 150). The author’s popularity declined after his death and was revived in 1945, 1968, 1990 due to the adaptation and broadcasting of The Forsyte Saga by BBC Radio.

Bibliography

• Barker, Dudley. John Galsworthy: Gentleman und Poet. Wien: Paul Zsolnay Verlag, 1962.
• Encyclopædia Britannica. "John Galsworthy." Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 28 Nov. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/224611/John-Galsworthy>.
• Frenz, Horst. From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967. Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing Company, 1969.
• Shaffer, Brian et al. Twentieth Century-British and Irish Fiction. n.p.: Blackwell Publishing, 2011.