It’s the birthday of British author and Nobel Laureate John Galsworthy (1867-1933), best known today for a series of novels called The Forsyte Saga which, whatever kind of reading they make, contain highly entertaining material for a television series.

Galsworthy was born in Kingston Hill, Surrey, England, and went to Harrow School, one of the oldest, most prestigious, most expensive, and most famous boarding schools for boys in the world, so we can assume he was extra miserable there. (I don’t actually know.) Galsworthy’s family were farmers from way back but had become rich in the 19th century via property. Galsworthy went on to study law at New College, Oxford, didn’t like practicing law, and began to write for his own amusement. During the time that he was discovering he didn’t like law, Galsworthy traveled around the world thinking about marine law—as good an excuse as any for such a trip—and started palling around with Joseph Conrad, then on a merchant ship; they became BFFs for life. So there’s that.

As a writer, Galsworthy first mucked around with short stories and a novel all written under the pseudonym John Sinjohn. Then he wrote Pharisees (1904) under his own name, and in 1906 came out with the first novel in the Forsyte Saga, A Man of Property (1906). This novel harshed on the very society Galsworthy had come from: people relatively new to the upper middle class and eager to amass more property and wealth. Years later, after WWI, he wrote the other two novels in the saga and eventually three more (collectively called A Modern Comedy, 1929), and even a smattering of Forsyte short stories (On Forsyte Change, 1930). In an interesting twist, Galsworthy began over the years to sympathize more and more with the very class and characters he had harshed on to begin with. Hmm.

In 1967, the BBC did a television series of The Forsyte Saga, and Granada Television in the UK (with financial backing from an American PBS station) also did a mini-series in 2002 starring Damian Lewis as Soames Forsyte, and a very fine job Lewis did.

Fun but somewhat unsavory fact: Galsworthy’s wife, Ada Pearson, was formerly his cousin’s wife; they had an affair for a number of years before she was divorced and free to marry him in 1905. She was the model for the character Irene in The Forsyte Saga.

The fact that Galsworthy was very very popular and highly regarded, and then he was not, may lead one to wonder, what’s up with that? While there are still people buying and reading his books (look him up on Amazon and Goodreads), he’s not the first name to come to mind when you think of great early 20th century authors. The article linked here addresses this very question and even leads with Galsworthy as the great example. Enjoy.

Have a delightful Tuesday with pockets of much-needed rest and stay scrupulously honest to the data.