The Silver Spoon

📗 John Galsworthy, the son of a solicitor, was born in 1867 and educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford. He was called to the Bar in 1890; while travelling in the Far East he met Conrad, who became a lifelong friend. In 1897 he published "Four Winds" (short stories) under another name, and later two novels. "The Man of Property" (1906), the first book in "The Forsyte Saga", together with his first play, "The Silver Box", established him in the public mind. Other novels and plays followed, but it was not until after the First World War that he completed the first Forsyte trilogy with "In Chancery" (1920) and "To Let" (1921). The complete edition of "The Forsyte Saga", first published in 1922, has since been through fifty-six impressions - The second Forsyte trilogy, "A Modern Comedy", appeared in 1929, and the third, "End of the Chapter", posthumously in 1934. Galsworthy was the first president of the P.E.N. Club, was awarded a Nobel Prize, and received the Order of Merit in 1929. He lived on Dartmoor for many years and afterwards at Bury on the Sussex Downs. He died in 1933. All the nine volumes in his three Forsyte trilogies are now in Penguins.