“Indian Summer of a Forsyte” from The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy (1918)

June 19, 2026 · 42 min

About this episode

This episode explores John Galsworthy's reflections on life and societal changes in his work 'The Forsyte Saga'.

“The thought that some day—perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps not five—all this world would be taken away from him, before he had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon. If anything came after this life, it wouldn’t be what he wanted; not Robin Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces—too few, even now, of those about him!” In 1906, John Galsworthy published Man of Property , the first novel in his acclaimed and oft-adapted The Forsyte Saga . It was met with the best sales and reviews of his career. (My reading of an excerpt from the book can be found here .) Despite its immediate success, Galsworthy was not quick to follow up The Man of Property. It took him 12 years to return to the Forsytes, a period he spent writing unrelated novels, putting on plays, and campaigning for various political causes. By the time Galsworthy finally revisited his most iconic creations, the world had changed dramatically. The First World War had upended much of the social order that produced families like the Forsytes, and the new generation of writers that emerged in its wake was not kind to his tales of the old aristocracy…

People in this episode

Host: Ruby Love

Topics covered

literature
classic novels
social change
aristocracy
World War I

Keywords

John Galsworthy
The Forsyte Saga
Man of Property
literature
aristocracy
World War I
social order

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Forsyte Saga, Man of Property