End of the Chapter
by John Galsworthy
End of the Chapter (Collections and Selections — Omnibus 1-3), The Forsyte Chronicles (Collections and Selections — 7-9)
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In this final volume of The Forsyte SagaGalsworthy writes about the lives and loves of the Cherrell family, cousins of the Forsytes. For centuries, the Cherrell sons have left their home of Condaford Grange to serve the state as soldiers, clergymen and administrators, but the 1930s bring uncertainty in a world of rapidly altering morals and unemployment. Galsworthy's portrayal of the effect of political change on individuals show him as a great social novelist as well as the author of one of show more the most gripping family sagas ever written. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Wow. A book hasn't had me this gripped or made me cry so much for years. Feeling somewhat heartbroken. Galsworthy's writing is just about perfect and his character Dinny so real I'm feeling emotionally raw.
certainly to be recommended and not just by Forsyte devotees interested to know what happens next (these books take even more of an about turn from the early parts of the saga). Galworthy writes with ease and interest; it feels as if he is interested to know what happens as a dispassionate observer, rather than as passionately engaged as with the story of Soames et al. Sexual manners and more remain at the heart of the novel, but there is an unbending and a blossoming that perhaps makes some of the trauma of the earlier books easier to bear
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Author Information
350+ Works 11,795 Members
At age 28, after a gentlemanly education at Harrow and Oxford, and a training at law, Galsworthy settled into simultaneous careers as a novelist and a playwright. The Silver Box, Galsworthy's first successful drama, was staged in 1906, the year he published the first volume of what was to become The Forsyte Saga. His one-word titles - Justice show more (1910), Strife (1909), Loyalties (1922)---suggest the nature of Galsworthy's artistic ambition: to generalize a social indictment, keeping faith with the objective methods of naturalism. In each, Galsworthy favors an austere irony and unresolvable situations, and balanced moral positions are displayed in the cabinetwork of "well-made" playwrighting. Reputed to have led to reforms in its time, his realism today seems contrived to produce aesthetic distance and a sense of resignation that is precisely what contemporary political dramatists strain hardest to avoid. Not surprisingly, critics have come away from revivals with the sense that (especially in his spare language) Galsworthy anticipates Harold Pinter rather than more socially engaged playwrights. Galsworthy wrote novels and plays alternately throughout his life. His masterwork, The Forsyte Saga, begun in 1906 and finished in 1928, and consisting of six separate novels and two linking interludes, is the most famous example of the sequence novel in English literature. It is a study of the property sense, the possessive spirit, in different individuals and generations of English middle-class society. He also completed a second trilogy dealing with the Forsyte family, called A Modern Comedy (1928). His last trilogy, a study of the Charwell family, is called End of the Chapter (1933). Galsworthy's later years brought him many honors, including the presidency of P.E.N. and honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, and several other universities. After World War I, he was offered a knighthood, which he refused. He did, however, accept the Order of Merit in 1929, and in 1932 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. He was, however, too ill to attend the Nobel ceremony and died within two months of receiving the award. Although his posthumous reputation had waned, the centenary of his death, in 1967, brought a re-creation of The Forsyte Saga on British and American television in serial form. Interest in him skyrocketed, and the Forsyte novels again became bestsellers. With new popularity came fresh critical analysis. Pamela Hansford Johnson called The Forsyte Saga "a work of profound social insight and patchy psychological insight" (N.Y. Times). His critical writings include The Inn of Tranquility: Studies and Essays (1911) and Author and Critic. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Alternate titles
- End of the Chapter
- Original publication date
- 1934
- Related movies
- The Forsyte Saga (1967 | IMDb)
- Disambiguation notice
- End of Chapter, Volumes 7 to 9 - Maid in Waiting, Flowering Wilderness and Over the River (One More River).
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 350
- Popularity
- 90,554
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.19)
- Languages
- 6 — English, French, German, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 14
- ASINs
- 19
