The Forsyte Saga (The Man of Property; In Chancery; To Let) - Softcover

Galsworthy, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743245024 ISBN 13: 9780743245029

Publisher: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 2002

Synopsis

The Forsyte Saga is John Galsworthy's monumental chronicle of the lives of the moneyed Forsytes, a family whose values are constantly at war with its passions. The story of Soames Forsyte's marriage to the beautiful and rebellious Irene, and its effects upon the whole Forsyte clan, The Forsyte Saga is a brilliant social satire of the acquisitive sensibilities of a comfort-bound class in its final glory. Galsworthy spares none of his characters, revealing their weaknesses and shortcomings as clearly as he does the tenacity and perseverance that define the strongest members of the Forsyte family.

This edition contains the three original novels -- The Man of Property, In Chancery, and To Let -- and their connecting interludes, Indian Summer of a Forsyte and Awakening.

About this title

About the Author:

John Galsworthy (1867-1933) was educated at Oxford, where he prepared to go into law, but later decided to devote himself to writing. The Man of Property (1906), the first of the three novels that became The Forsyte Saga, established his reputation as an author and a keen observer of society. Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.

Review:

Sequence of three novels linked by two interludes by John Galsworthy. The saga chronicles the lives of three generations of a monied, middle-class English family at the turn of the century. As published in 1922, The Forsyte Saga consisted of the novel The Man of Property (1906); the interlude (a short story) "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" (1918); the novel In Chancery (1920); the interlude "Awakening" (1920); and the novel To Let (1921). Soames Forsyte, a solicitor and "the man of property," is married to the beautiful, penniless Irene, who falls in love with Philip Bosinney, the French architect whom Soames had hired to build a country house. Soames rapes Irene and proceeds to ruin Bosinney, who subsequently dies in a traffic accident in London. Irene returns to Soames. In Chancery concerns the love between Irene and Young Jolyon Forsyte, Soames's cousin. (The story of the last days of Old Jolyon, his father, is told in "Indian Summer of a Forsyte.") Irene and Soames divorce; she marries Jolyon and bears a son, Jon. Soames and his second wife, Annette Lamotte, have a daughter, Fleur. In To Let, Fleur and Jon grow up and fall in love; Jolyon informs his son of Irene and Soames's past relationship. Although Fleur is determined to marry Jon, he refuses. Fleur becomes the wife of Michael Mont, son of a baronet. Jolyon dies, and Irene leaves England. Soames discovers that Annette is involved in an affair with a Frenchman, as Irene had been. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner Paperback Fiction
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743245024
• ISBN 13: 9780743245029
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 896