ries:
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.]

FORSYTE SAGA

Complete

By John Galsworthy

Contents:
Part 1. The Man of Property
Part 2. Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery
Part 3. Awakening
To Let

THE MAN OF PROPERTY

TO MY WIFE:

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.

PREFACE:

"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 Fors