The English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy (1867-1933) was one of the most popular writers of the early 20th century. His work explores the transitions and contrasts between pre- and post-World War I England.

Born on Aug. 14, 1867, in Coombe, Surrey, at the height of the Victorian era, John Galsworthy was educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford. He was admitted to the bar in 1890, and 8 years later, after his first novel Jocelyn appeared, he left law to continue writing. The Island Pharisees (1904) and The Man of Property (1906), which became the first novel in The Forsyte Saga, expanded his audience and his reputation.

As his popularity increased, Galsworthy published other novels of the Forsyte series: Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1918), In Chancery (1920), Awakening (1920), and To Let (1921). In The Forsyte Saga late Victorian and Edwardian England's upper-middle-class society is portrayed, dissected, and criticized. Although The Man of Property and To...