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John GALSWORTHY - The Forsyte Saga


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John Galsworthy (1867 – 1933)

Born in Kingston Hill, Surrey, England. He studied at Oxford. He was awarded by the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. He wrote The Forsyte Saga (1906-1928), Strife (1909), Justice (1910), The Skin Game (1920).

http://english-reading-time.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-forsyte-saga-john-galsworthy.html

'The Forsyte Saga'

Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper middle-class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family--no branch of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy--evidence of that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature…

On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the observer who chanced to be present at the house of old Jolyon Forsyte in Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest efflorescence of the Forsytes.This was the occasion of an 'at home' to celebrate the engagement of Miss June Forsyte, old Jolyon's granddaughter, to Mr. Philip Bosinney. In the bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats, feathers and frocks, the family were present, even Aunt Ann, who now but seldom left the corner of her brother Timothy's green drawing-room, where, under the aegis of a plume of dyed pampas grass in a light blue vase, she sat all day reading and knitting, surrounded by the effigies of three generations of Forsytes. Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of her calm old face personifying the rigid possessiveness of the family idea…

About the Forsytes mingling that day with the crowd of other guests, there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert, inquisitive assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they were attired in defiance of something. The habitual sniff on the face of Soames Forsyte had spread through their ranks; they were on their guard…The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and--the sniff. Danger--so indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual--was what the Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour…

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