PROJECT ASHABI
African Stories. Limitless Worlds.
PROJECT ASHABI
African Stories. Limitless Worlds.
Project Gutenberg Archive
Complete unabridged public-domain literary work from the Project Gutenberg archive.
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THE ENTIRE PROJECT GUTENBERG GALSWORTHY FILES
The Forsyte Saga: Volume 1. The Man of Property Volume 2. Indian Summer of a Forsyte In Chancery Volume 3. Awakening To Let Other Novels: The Dark Flower The Freelands Beyond Villa Rubein and Other Stories Villa Rubein A Man of Devon A Knight Salvation of a Forsyte The Silence Saint's Progress The Island Pharisees The Country House Fraternity The Patrician The Burning Spear Five Short Tales The First and Last A Stoic The Apple Tree The Juryman Indian Summer of a Forsyte Essays and Studies: Concerning Life Inn of Tranquility Magpie over the Hill Sheep-shearing Evolution Riding in the Mist The Procession A Christian Wind in the Rocks My Distant Relative The Black Godmother Quality The Grand Jury Gone Threshing That Old-time Place Romance--three Gleams Memories Felicity Concerning Letters A Novelist's Allegory Some Platitudes Concerning Drama Meditation on Finality Wanted--Schooling On Our Dislike of Things as They Are The Windlestraw About Censorship Vague Thoughts on Art Plays: First Series: The Silver Box Joy Strife Second Series: The Eldest Son The Little Dream Justice Third Series: The Fugitive The Pigeon The Mob Fourth Series: A Bit O' Love The Foundations The Skin Game Six Short Plays: The First and The Last The Little Man Hall-marked Defeat The Sun Punch and Go Fifth Series: A Family Man Loyalties Windows
[NOTE: The spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our "z's"; and "c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour and flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]
Contents: Part 1. The Man of Property Part 2. Indian Summer of a Forsyte In Chancery Part 3. Awakening To Let
I DEDICATE THE FORSYTE SAGA IN ITS ENTIRETY, BELIEVING IT TO BE OF ALL MY WORKS THE LEAST UNWORTHY OF ONE WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT, SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM I COULD NEVER HAVE BECOME EVEN SUCH A WRITER AS I AM.
"The Forsyte Saga" was the title originally destined for that part of it which is called "The Man of Property"; and to adopt it for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged the Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us. The word Saga might be objected to on the ground that it connotes the heroic and that there is little heroism in these pages. But it is used with a suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale, though it may deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged period, is not devoid of the essential heat of conflict. Discounting for the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old days, as they have come down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the folk of the old Sagas were Forsytes, assuredly, in their possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon. And if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to startle out from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then the prime force, and that "family" and the sense of home and property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent efforts to "talk them out."
So many people have written and claimed that their families were the originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged to believe in the typicality of an imagined species. Manners change and modes evolve, and "Timothy's on the Bayswater Road" becomes a nest of the unbelievable in all except essentials; we shall not look upon its like again, nor perhaps on such a one as James or Old Jolyon. And yet the figures of Insurance Societies and the utterances of Judges reassure us daily that our earthly paradise is still a rich preserve, where the wild raiders, Beauty and Passion, come stealing in, filching security from beneath our noses. As surely as a dog will bark at a brass band, so will the essential Soames in human nature ever rise up uneasily against the dissolution which hovers round the folds of ownership.
Arthur Conan Doyle
