The story that distorted the British class system

Galsworthy’s writing career spanned the first three decades of the twentieth century, and in 1932, he won the most prestigious literary award of all, the Nobel Prize “for his outstanding narrative art which took its highest form in the Forsyte saga,” the judges said.

Gil Dury, honorary associate professor at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and author of a book about Galsworthy, says he was deserving of the award. “He is a realistic writer,” she says, “who writes about issues that are considered current in his time.” “The novels are very easy to read, and the characters are well-drawn and distinctive. The focus is on relationships and the difficulties of life. The main characters are wealthy Forsytes, but the struggles of ordinary people feature as well.”

Scientific

Dorey points out that writers from different literary traditions did not rate Galsworthy and criticized his work. “The modernists – Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce – were angry about Galsworthy’s Nobel Prize and tried to discredit him,” she says. However, the Forsyte saga has proven to be an exceptionally enduring tale, and remains relevant to this day.

British Golden Age

Forsyte’s first novel was published in 1906 as The Property Man. It’s about Soames Forsyte, a wealthy lawyer from London. He and his beautiful, but emotionally distant, wife Irene are at the center of a story that involves four generations of the family.