A Silent Wooing

By John Galsworthy and Karl Wurf

Galsworthy's sequel to The Forsyte Saga came in A Modern Comedy, written in the years 1924 to 1928. This comprises a novel, The White Monkey, an interlude, A Silent Wooing, a second novel, The Silver Spoon, a second interlude, Passers By, and a third novel, Swan Song.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alien Ebooks
• Release date: May 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667624396

John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy was a Nobel-Prize (1932) winning English dramatist, novelist, and poet born to an upper-middle class family in Surrey, England. He attended Harrow and trained as a barrister at New College, Oxford. Although called to the bar in 1890, rather than practise law, Galsworthy travelled extensively and began to write. It was as a playwright Galsworthy had his first success. His plays—like his most famous work, the series of novels comprising The Forsyte Saga—dealt primarily with class and the social issues of the day, and he was especially harsh on the class from which he himself came.

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INTRODUCTION, by Karl Wurf

John Galsworthy (1867-1933), an eminent English novelist and playwright, is best known for his series of novels collectively referred to as The Forsyte Saga. This literary sequence has secured Galsworthy's reputation as a writer and social commentator.

Born to an affluent family, Galsworthy, through his fiction, aimed to critique the materialism and moral bankruptcy he perceived in the British upper-middle class of his time. 'The Forsyte Saga' is an enduring reflection of that critique. The main sequence of the saga comprises three novels: The Man of Property, In Chancery, and To Let – plus two interludes: Indian Summer of a Forsyte and Awakening. It narrates the lives of the wealthy Forsyte family from the late 19th to the early 20th century. The Forsyte family also appears in quite a few other Galsworthy works, including A Silent Wooing.

The Forsyte Saga paints a picture of an era, marked by prosperity and propriety, but beneath the polished surface, it uncovers the moral ambiguities and hypocrisies. Galsworthy's detailed and nuanced portrayal of his characters, particularly Soames Forsyte, conveys the human struggle between tradition and progress, between self-interest and empathy. The clash of values within the family, as represented through various members of the Forsyte clan, offers a broader comment on the societal shifts of the time.

Galsworthy's skillful writing and profound understanding of societal dynamics earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932. His incisive portrayal of the changing societal fabric has made The Forsyte Saga a compelling read, even today. He did