John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy trained as a barrister but devoted his career to novels, plays, and short fiction about English social life. The Forsyte Saga, the family chronicle singled out when he received the 1932 Nobel Prize in Literature, brings together three novels and two interludes. The White Monkey and The Silver Spoon later became the first two novels of A Modern Comedy, extending the Forsyte story into a younger generation and a changed post-First World War society. On Forsyte ‘Change gathers nineteen shorter episodes involving members of the family. Tatterdemalion, issued in 1920, arranges stories in wartime and peacetime sections. Taken together, these books show how Galsworthy moved between multivolume sequence, compact character study, and story collection while returning to questions of property, class, marriage, and social responsibility.