John Galsworthy
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| John Galsworthy | |
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| Born | August 14, 1867 Kingston, Surrey, England |
| Died | January 31, 1933 (aged 65) London, England |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | English |
| Notable award(s) | Nobel Prize in Literature 1932 |
John Galsworthy OM (IPA: /ˈgɔːlzwɝːðɪ/) (14 August 1867—31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906—1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932.
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[edit] Life
Galsworthy was born at Kingston Hill in Surrey, England into an established wealthy family, the son of John and Blanche Bailey (nee Bartleet) Galsworthy. His large Kingston upon Thames estate is now the site of three schools: Marymount International, Rokeby Preparatory School and Holy Cross. He attended Harrow and New College, Oxford, training 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 interests. During these travels he met Joseph Conrad, 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, the wife of one of his cousins. After her divorce the pair eventually married on 23 September 1905 and stayed together until his death in 1933.
From the Four Winds was Galsworthy's first published work in 1897, a collection of short stories. These, and several subsequent works, were published under the pen name John Sinjohn and it would not be until The Island Pharisees (1904) that he would begin publishing under his own name, probably owing to the death of his father. His first play, The Silver Box (1906) became a success, and he followed it up with The Man of Property (1906), the first in the Forsyte trilogy. Although he continued writing both plays and novels it was as a playwright he was mainly appreciated at the time. Along with those of other writers of the time, such as George Bernard Shaw, his plays addressed the class system and social issues, two of the best known being Strife (1909) and The Skin Game (1920).
He is now far better known for his novels and particularly The Forsyte Saga, the first of three trilogies of novels about the eponymous family and connected lives. These books, as with many of his other works, dealt with class, and in particular upper-middle class lives. 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; challenging in his works some of the ideals of society depicted in the proceeding 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 even though her previous marriage was not as miserable as Irene's.
His work is often less convincing when it deals with the changing face of wider British society and how it affects people of the lower social classes. Through his writings he campaigned for a variety of causes including prison reform, women's rights, animal welfare and censorship, but these have limited appeal outside the era in which they were written. During World War I he worked in a hospital in France as an orderly after being passed over for military service. He was elected as the first president of the International PEN literary club in 1921, was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1929—after earlier turning down a knighthood—and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932. He was too ill to attend the Nobel awards ceremony, and died six weeks later.
John 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 and his ashes scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane[1], but there is also a memorial in Highgate 'New' Cemetery [2]. The popularity of his fiction waned quickly after his death but the hugely successful adaptation of The Forsyte Saga in 1967 renewed interest in the writer.
A number of John Galsworthy's letters and papers are held at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.
In 2007, Kingston University, London opened a new building named in recognition of his local birth.
[edit] Adaptations
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.
- BBC television drama (1967), dir. by James Cellan Jones, David Giles, starring Eric Porter, Nyree Dawn Porter, Kenneth More, Susan Hampshire, Joseph O'Conor, adaptor Lennox Philips and others, 26 parts
- Granada television drama (2002), dir. by Christopher Menaul, starring Gina McKee, Damian Lewis, Rupert Graves, Corin Redgrave, 13 parts.
The Skin Game was adapted and directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1931. It starred VC France, Helen Haye, Jill Esmond, Edmund Gwenn, John Longden.
Escape was filmed in 1930 and 1948. The latter was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starring Rex Harrison, Peggy Cummins, William Hartnell. The screenplay was by Philip Dunne.
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. It also featured Mrs. Patrick Campbell in a rare sound film appearance.
The First and the Last, a short play, was adapted as 21 Days, starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.
[edit] Selected works
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[edit] Notes
[edit] External links
- John Galsworthy at Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- John Galsworthy at Find A Grave
- The Forsyte Chronicles at eBooks@Adelaide
- Works by John Galsworthy at Project Gutenberg
- The Man of Property LibriVox recording
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