The Forsyte Saga

Across three novels and two shorter interludes, John Galsworthy follows the Forsytes, a prosperous English family who measure life by what they own. At the center stands Soames Forsyte, a solicitor who thinks of himself as a man of property and treats even his beautiful wife, Irene, as a possession to be held. Their unhappy marriage sends ripples across a generation, touching questions of love, freedom, class, and the slow decline of Victorian certainties into a new century. Galsworthy writes with a cool, ironic eye, sympathetic and critical at once, and the saga became the work that carried him to the Nobel Prize. Free to download as a PDF and EPUB edition.