Interest still accruing

Galsworthy is one of those writers who obstinately survives. Critical opinion wrote him off long ago. His plays are rarely staged. Most of his novels have sunk below the horizon. Yet the three which make up The Forsyte Saga have rarely, if ever, been out of print, and continue to be read — not only on account of the famous TV dramatisation — and A Modern Comedy, the trilogy he wrote as a sequel, perhaps also, even if his grasp of the world after 1918 was uncertain, sketchy, journalistic.

The Saga itself was not conceived as such. The Man of Property was published in 1906, In Chancery not till 1920, with To Let following the next year. One has the impression that at some point Galsworthy thought, ‘I can do more with these characters.’ In doing so he mined a popular seam, but it may be that his reputation would be higher if the first book had been allowed to stand alone.