Black leather binding with gilt lettering. Part of a set. Gilt edge top to pages.

The Forsyte Saga, first published under that title in 1922, is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by the English author John Galsworthy, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of a large upper-middle-class English family that is like Galsworthy’s. Only a few generations removed from their farmer ancestors, its members are keenly aware of their status as “new money”. The main character, the solicitor and connoisseur Soames Forsyte, sees himself as a “man of property” by virtue of his ability to accumulate material possessions, but that does not succeed in bringing him pleasure.

Separate sections of the saga, as well as the lengthy story in its entirety, have been adapted for cinema and television. The Man of Property, the first book, was adapted in 1949 by Hollywood as That Forsyte Woman, starring Errol Flynn, Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, and Robert Young. In 1967, the BBC produced a popular 26-part serial that dramatised The Forsyte Saga and a subsequent trilogy concerning the Forsytes, A Modern Comedy. In 2002 Granada Television produced two series for the ITV network: The Forsyte Saga and The Forsyte Saga: To Let. Both made runs in the U.S. as parts of Masterpiece Theatre. In 2003, The Forsyte Saga was listed as #123 on the BBC’s The Big Read poll of the UK’s “best-loved novel”.

Following The Forsyte Saga, Galsworthy wrote two more trilogies and several more interludes based around the titular family. The resulting series is collectively titled The Forsyte Chronicles.

John Galsworthy (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.

Galsworthy was born at what is now known as Galsworthy House (then called Parkhurst) on Kingston Hill in Surrey, England, the son of John and Blanche Bailey (née Bartleet) Galsworthy. His family was prosperous and well established, with a large property in Kingston upon Thames that is now the site of three schools: Marymount International School, Rokeby Preparatory School, and Holy Cross Preparatory School. He attended Harrow and New College, Oxford. He took a Second in Law (Jurisprudentia) at Oxford in 1889, then trained 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. During these travels, he met Joseph Conrad in 1893, 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 Cooper (1864–1956), the wife of his cousin Major Arthur Galsworthy. After her divorce ten years later, they were married on 23 September 1905 and stayed together until his death in 1933. Before their marriage, they often stayed clandestinely in a farmhouse called Wingstone in the village of Manaton on Dartmoor, Devon. In 1908 Galsworthy took a long lease on part of the building, and it was their regular second home until 1923.