John Galsworthy (; 14 August 1867 – 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. He is best known for his trilogy of novels collectively called The Forsyte Saga (1906, 1920, 1921), and two later trilogies, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Born to a prosperous upper-middle-class family, Galsworthy was destined for a career as a lawyer, but found it uncongenial and turned instead to writing. He was thirty before his first book was published in 1897, and did not achieve real success until 1906, when The Man of Property, the first of his novels about the Forsyte family was published. In the same year his first play, The Silver Box was staged in London. As a dramatist, he became known for plays with a social message, reflecting, among other themes, the struggle of workers against exploitation, the use of solitary confinement in prisons, the repression of women, jingoism and the politics and morality of war.
The Forsyte family series of novels and short stories collectively known as The Forsyte Chronicles is similar in many ways to Galsworthy's family, and the patriarch, Old Jolyon, is modelled on Galsworthy's father. The main sequence runs from the late 19th century to the early 1930s, featuring three generations of the family. The books were popular when first published and their latter-day popularity was boosted considerably when BBC Television broadcast a 26-part adaptation for the author's centenary in 1967.
As well as writing plays and novels with social messages, Galsworthy campaigned continually for a wide range of causes about which he felt strongly, from animal welfare to prison reform, censorship and workers' rights. Although seen by many as a radical, he belonged to and supported no political party. His plays are seldom revived, but his novels have been frequently reissued.
John Galsworthy was born on 14 August 1867 at his family's home, Parkfield (now called Galsworthy House) on Kingston Hill in Surrey. He was the second child and elder son of the four children of John Galsworthy (1817–1904) and his wife Blanche Bailey née Bartleet (1837–1915). John senior was a London solicitor, with a flourishing practice, as well as substantial wealth inherited from his father – also John – who was from a Devonshire farming family. The latter had prospered as a ship chandler in Plymouth before moving to London and investing profitably in property. In the class-conscious mid-Victorian era, Blanche Galsworthy saw herself as being from a higher social stratum than her husband's comparatively nouveau riche family, and this, together with a 20-year age gap between them, made for an uneasy relationship. The four children were considerably more en rapport with their father than with their mother. He became the model for Old Jolyon, the patriarch in The Forsyte Saga; looking back, Galsworthy said in 1919, "I was so truly and deeply fond of him that I seemed not to have a fair share of love left to give to my mother".
Galsworthy was educated by a governess until he was nine. In 1876 he was sent to Saugeen, a small preparatory school in Bournemouth. He was happy there, and his happiness increased when his younger brother, Hubert, was sent to join him. In the summer term of 1881 Galsworthy left Saugeen to go to Harrow School. He became a member of the school football team, and captain of his house XI. A contemporary later described him as "one of the best football players and runners there have ever been at Harrow ... a beautiful dribbler and full of pluck". His biographer David Holloway comments that in describing a character in a 1930 short story, Galsworthy was in fact describing his schoolboy self:
After Harrow, Galsworthy went to New College, Oxford to read law, matriculating in October 1886. His biographer Catherine Dupré calls his time at Oxford "a happy, almost frivolous, interlude in a life that was lived in general with the greatest solemnity". An Oxford contemporary recalled him as living the typical life of the well-to-do, a not very intellectual undergraduate from a leading public school. He joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society, and acted in other amateur productions, in one of which he fell in love with a fellow performer, Sybil Carlisle (later a professional actress); his ardent feelings were not reciprocated, which caused him much angst. He concluded his time at Oxford with a second-class honours degree, awarded in 1889.
As his father wished, Galsworthy entered the legal profession. He was admitted to Lincoln's Inn and was called to the bar in the Easter term of 1890. Holloway comments that as the son of a leading solicitor, Galsworthy was in an excellent position for a young barrister. His father could put a good deal of work his way and recommend him to other solicitors. He was nonetheless unenthusiastic about practising as a barrister. At his father's instigation he went with his brother Hubert on a trip across Canada, ostensibly to examine some family holdings there, but, according to Holloway, chiefly as a version of the Grand Tour, to let the brothers see something of the world.
After returning to England in September 1891, Galsworthy had a brief, unhappy love affair. His father arranged further foreign trips to distract him from his emotional troubles and to develop his legal education by studying aspects of maritime law at close quarters with a view to specialising in it once back at home. In November 1892 Galsworthy and a friend from Oxford, Ted Sanderson, began a long trip that took them to the South Seas (where they hoped but failed to meet Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa), Australasia and South Africa.
On the voyage from Adelaide to Cape Town, beginning in April 1893, Galsworthy met the ship's first mate, Joseph Conrad, who had yet to begin his career as a writer. The two became lifelong friends. In 1904 Galsworthy went to Russia, where his father had financial interests, before returning to England, supposedly to resume his career as a barrister. He remained unenthusiastic about working as a lawyer: "I read in various Chambers, practised almost not at all, and disliked my profession thoroughly". An obituarist in 1933 commented that despite Galsworthy's distaste for the legal profession, his study of the law left a permanent mark on his fiction, in which there are numerous court scenes, mostly leading to an outcome that does more harm than good. At this stage of his life Galsworthy was under no pressure to earn a living, having an adequate allowance from his father, but although he disapproved of an idle existence, he had no clear idea of what he wished to do.
In 1895 Galsworthy began a love affair with the wife of his cousin Arthur Galsworthy. Ada Galsworthy had married Arthur in 1891, but they had little in common and quickly drifted apart; within a year they had agreed to live separately. Until the death of John Galsworthy senior in 1904, Ada and Galsworthy kept their relationship secret, because a scandal would have distressed the old man greatly. Ada encouraged Galsworthy to become a writer, as did his two sisters, Lilian (Lily) and Mabel, close friends of Ada.
Galsworthy published his first work of fiction in 1897, when he was aged 30. It was a volume of nine short stories, From the Four Winds, printed at his own expense. The book received many favourable reviews, but sales were modest. Nevertheless, the young publisher Gerald Duckworth was willing to take a chance on Galsworthy's second book, a novel, Jocelyn, which he published in 1898. The author later dismissed his first two books as prentice works – he called From the Four Winds "that dreadful little book" – and over the next few years he honed his skills. He later said that he was writing fiction for five years before he mastered even the basic techniques. He studied the works of Turgenev and Maupassant, learning from their literary craftsmanship.
While his father remained alive, Galsworthy wrote under a pseudonym, John Sinjon, in whose name his first four books were published. His 1901 collection of short stories, A Man of Devon, included "The Salvation of Swithin Forsyte", the first episode in what he later developed into a three-generation family saga, known collectively as The Forsyte Chronicles. Two years later he began writing The Man of Property, the first novel in the sequence.