John Galsworthy Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of The Forsyte Saga Books
Salvation of a Forsyte | (1900) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Man of Property | (1906) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Indian Summer of a Forsyte | (1918) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
In Chancery | (1920) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
To Let | (1921) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
One More River | (1933) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Man Of Property | (2018) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of End of the Chapter Books
Maid in Waiting | (1931) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Flowering Wilderness | (1932) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Over the River | (1933) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of A Modern Comedy Books
The White Monkey | (1924) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Silver Spoon | (1926) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Swan Song | (1928) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Two Forsyte Interludes | (1928) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
On Forsyte Change | (1930) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Jocelyn | (1898) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Country House | (1907) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Fraternity | (1909) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
A Motley | (1910) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Patrician | (1911) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Dark Flower | (1913) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Freelands | (1915) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
A Modern Comedy | (1922) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Captures | (1923) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Beyond | (1927) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Saints Progress | (1970) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
A Sheaf | (2001) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Burning Spear | (2002) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
From The Four Winds | (2022) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Plays
The Silver Box | (1909) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Strife | (1909) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Justice | (1910) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Fugitive | (1913) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Skin Game | (1920) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Foundations | (1920) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Windows | (1922) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Loyalties | (1922) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Show | (1925) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Old English | (1925) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Joy | (1925) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The First and The Last | (1927) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Exiled | (1929) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Silver Box and Other Plays | (1936) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Escape | (1977) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
A Family Man | (2002) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Punch and Go | (2004) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Eldest Son | (2004) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Hall Marked A Satiric Trifle | (2004) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Little Dream | (2004) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
A Knight | (2015) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Mob | (2016) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Collections
A Man of Devon | (1901) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Moods, Songs, and Doggerels | (1912) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Apple Tree | (1918) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Eldest Son and The Little Dream | (1919) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Plays of John Galsworthy | (1920) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
A Bit O' Love | (1920) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Tatterdemalion | (1920) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Abracadabra and Other Satires | (1924) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Uncollected Forsyte | (1930) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Little Man | (1997) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Five Tales | (1999) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Foundations & A Bit of Love | (2002) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Villa Rubein | (2002) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Collected Poems of John Galsworthy | (2004) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Complete Plays of John Galsworthy; Volume 1 | (2006) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Complete Plays of John Galsworthy; Volume 2 | (2006) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Vague Thoughts On Art | (1912) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Inn of Tranquillity | (1931) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Glimpses and Reflections | (1937) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
John Galsworthy's Letters to Leon Lion | (1968) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Letters from John Galsworthy, 1900-1932 | (1971) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Candelabra | (2001) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Essays Concerning Letters | (2004) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Memories | (2004) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Censorship And Art | (2004) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Addresses in America, 1919 | (2004) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Complete Essays of John Galsworthy | (2012) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
A Justification of the Censorship of Plays | (2013) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Anthologies
Great First World War Stories | (1930) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Anthology of Love and Romance | (1994) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
100 Twisted Little Tales of Torment | (1998) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
God's Little Acre: Clerical Tales of the Countryside | (2001) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories | (2019) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Big Book of Best Short Stories - Volume 9 | (2020) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy was born on August 14, 1867 in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, born at what’s now called Galsworthy House (at that time known as Parkhurst). He was the son of Blanche Bailey (nee Bartleet) and John Galsworthy. His family was well established and prosperous, with a large property.
John went to New College, Oxford, and Harrow. He took a Second in Law (Jurisprudentia) at Oxford in 1889, and then trained as a barrister and was called to the bar in the year 1890.
But he wasn’t keen to start practicing law and traveled abroad to look after the family’s trans-European shipping agency. It was during this time that he met Joseph Conrad in 1893, who was then the first mate of a sailing ship moored in the harbor of Adelaide, Australia, and these two future novelists quickly became close friends.
In 1897, he published his first book and first collection of short stories “From the Four Winds”. These and many subsequent works were published under his pen name of John Sinjohn, and it wasn’t until 1904’s “The Island Pharisees” that he started publishing under his real name, probably owing to his dad’s recent death.
In 1906, he published his first play, called “The Silver Box”, which quickly became a success, and he followed that up with “The Man of the Property”, which was the first book of a Forsyte trilogy. Even though he continued writing both novels and plays, it was his work as a playwright that he was primarily appreciated at the time. Along with other writers of the time period, like George Bernard Shaw, his plays addressed the class system as well as other social issues, two of the best known being “Strife” and “The Skin Game”.
While he’s sympathetic to his characters, he still highlights their snobbish, insular, and acquisitive attitudes as well as their suffocating moral codes. He’s one of the first Edwardian era authors that challenged some of the ideals of society as depicted in the preceding literature of Victorian England.
In 1895, he started an affair with Ada Nemesis Pearson Cooper, who was the wife of John’s cousin, Major Arthur Galsworthy. They married after her divorce was finalized on September 23, 1905 and remained together until he died.
Before they got married, they often stayed clandestinely in a farmhouse known as Wingstone which was in the village of Manaton on Dartmoor, Devon. In the year 1908, he took out a long lease on part of the building, and it wound up being their regular second home until the year 1923.
John, through his writings, campaigned for a variety of causes, which includes women’s rights, prison reform, and animal welfare, as well as campaigning against censorship. John was a supporter of British involvement in the Great War.
He opposed the slaughter of animals and fought for animal rights. He opposed hunting and was a supporter of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports. John was also a humanitarian and was a member of the Humanitarian League.
In 1932, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, after he was nominated by Henrik Schuck, and John donated the money from his Nobel to PEN International. He was too ill to attend the ceremony held on December 10, 1932.
John’s sister, Lilian, was married to Georg Sauter, a German painter and lithographer from 1894. Their son, Rudolf, was also a graphic artist and painter, who among other things, illustrated his uncle’s work.
The last seven years of his life he lived at Bury, West Sussex. He died from a brain tumor on January 31, 1933 at the age of 65 in Hampstead, London at his home at Grove Lodge in Hampstead. The popularity of his stories declined subsequent to his death, until the highly popular television adaptation of “The Forsyte Saga” in 1967 increased public interest in his work.
“The Forsyte Saga” has been filmed several other times. Once in 1949 where Errol Flynn played a rare villainous role as Soames, in a version directed by Compton Bennett for MGM. And again in 2002, in a version directed by Christopher Menaul, which starred Gina McKee, Rupert Graves, Damian Lewis, and Corin Redgrave.
“The White Monkey” was adapted into a silent film in 1925, while “The Skin Game” was adapted and directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1931, which starred Helen Haye, C.V. France, Jill Esmund, and Edmund Gwenn. “Escape” was adapted twice, once in 1930 and 1948, with Joseph L. Mankiewicz directing the latter which starred Rex Harrison, Peggy Cummins, and William Hartnell. “One More River” (based off “Over the River”) was filmed in 1934 by James Whale. It starred Collin Clive, Frank Lawton, and Diana Wynnyard, and it featured Mrs. Patrick Campbell in a rare appearance in a talkie.
John’s “The Apple Tree” short story was adapted into a radio play for Orson Welles’ “Lady Esther Almanac” radio series on CBS, which was first broadcast on January 12, 1942. And the 1988 film called “A Summer Story” was also based off “The Apple Tree”.
The nine books which make up “The Forsyte Chronicles”, one of the most enduring and popular works of 20th century literature, chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper middle class Forsyte family between 1886 and 1920. His masterful narrative not only examines their fortunes but also the wider developments within society, especially women’s changing position. John has drawn an accurately detailed and fascinating picture of the British propertied class.
The series, often incorrectly called “The Forsyte Saga”, the nine novel sequence which is properly known as “The Forsyte Chronicles” is made up of three trilogies, of which the first trilogy is “The Forsyte Saga”, while the second trilogy is “A Modern Comedy”, and is followed by the “End of the Chapter”, the third and final trilogy.
He devoted virtually all of his professional career to creating a fictional yet wholly representative family of propertied Victorians with the Forsytes. He made their lives and times, fortunes and deaths, losses and loves so very real that readers accused him of including as characters in his drama some real individuals whom they actually knew.
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