To Let, first published 1921, is the third novel in the trilogy The Forsyte Saga and concluded the series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by Nobel Prize-winning English author John Galsworthy. In 2003, The Forsyte Saga was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel".
A titanic masterpiece - nine hundred pages of a multi-generational story of a fictional English family that spans the Victorian, Edwardian, and post-World War I eras. It's the story of the Forsyte family, spanning several generations and several wars, and its obsession with "property."
The Forsyte Saga comprises a novel, The Man of Property, an interlude, Indian Summer of a Forsyte, a second novel, In Chancery, a second interlude, Awakening, and a third novel To Let.
They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of a large commercial upper middle-class English family, similar to Galsworthy's own. Only a few generations removed from their farmer ancestors, the family members are keenly aware of their status as "new money". The main character, Soames Forsyte, sees himself as a "man of property" by virtue of his ability to accumulate material possessions—but this does not succeed in bringing him pleasure.
Also included in this edition is On Forsyte 'Change (1930) which deals mainly with the older Forsytes before the events chronicled in The Man of Property. Galsworthy states in a Foreword that "They have all been written since Swan Song was finished but in place they come between the Saga and the Comedy . . .".
After the first trilogy, The Forsyte Saga, Galsworthy wrote two additional sequels (also each a trilogy); A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter, which form what is commonly referred to as The Forsyte Cronicles.
John Galsworthy was an English novelist and playwright. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1932. The Nobel committee usually gives the prize for a lifetime of work, but in their decision, they specifically noted that Galsworthy deserved the prize “for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga.”
