She resists his grasping intentions, and falls in love with the architect Philip Bosinney, who has been engaged by Soames to build the house. He concocts a plan to move her to a house he is having built at Robin Hill, away from everyone she knows and cares for. Forsyte is jealous of her friendships and wants her to be his alone. The character of Irene is based upon Galsworthy's wife Ada Galsworthy. In this first novel of the Forsyte Saga, after introducing us to the impressive array of Forsytes headed by the formidable Aunt Ann, Galsworthy moves into the main action of the saga by detailing Soames Forsyte's desire to own things, including his beautiful wife, Irene Forsyte (née Heron).

The resulting series is collectively titled The Forsyte Chronicles.īooks The Man of Property (1906) įollowing The Forsyte Saga, Galsworthy wrote two more trilogies and several more interludes based around the titular family. In 2003, The Forsyte Saga was listed as #123 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's 'best-loved novel'. Both made runs in the US as parts of Masterpiece Theatre. In 2002 Granada Television produced two series for the ITV network: The Forsyte Saga and The Forsyte Saga: To Let. In 1967, the BBC produced a popular 26-part serial that dramatised The Forsyte Saga and a subsequent trilogy concerning the Forsytes, A Modern Comedy. The Man of Property, the first book, was adapted in 1949 by Hollywood as That Forsyte Woman, starring Errol Flynn, Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, and Robert Young. Separate sections of the saga, as well as the lengthy story in its entirety, have been adapted for cinema and television.

The main character, the solicitor and connoisseur Soames Forsyte, sees himself as a 'man of property' by virtue of his ability to accumulate material possessions, but that does not succeed in bringing him pleasure. Only a few generations removed from their farmer ancestors, its members are keenly aware of their status as ' new money'. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of a large upper-middle-class English family that is similar to Galsworthy's. The Forsyte Saga, first published under that title in 1922, is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 19 by the English author John Galsworthy, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The forsyte chronicles