John Galsworthy

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 in1893, 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]

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).

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.[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 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.

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

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

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Sources

• Works by John Galsworthy at Project Gutenberg
• Works by John Galsworthy at Faded Page (Canada)
• Works by or about John Galsworthy at Internet Archive
• The Forsyte Chronicles
• Works by John Galsworthy at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• The Forsyte Chronicles at eBooks@Adelaide
• Works by John Galsworthy at Open Library
• Plays by John Galsworthy on Great War Theatre
• John Galsworthy on Nobelprize.org

Biographical

• John Galsworthy at Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Interview with Galsworthy biographer Jeffrey Reznick on "New Books in History."
• John Galsworthy letters. Available online through Lehigh University's I Remain: A Digital Archive of Letters, Manuscripts, and Ephemera.
• Newspaper clippings about John Galsworthy in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Archives

• The Papers of John Galsworthy at Dartmouth College Library