The most prized item in Soames Forsyte's collection of beautiful things is his wife, the enigmatic Irene. But when she falls in love with Bosinney, a penniless architect who utterly rejects the Forsyte values, their affair touches off a series of events which can only end in disgrace and disaster. John Galsworthy tackles his theme of the demise of the upper-middle classes with irony and compassion.

In a short interlude after The Man of Property, Galsworthy delves into the newfound friendship between Irene and Old Jolyon Forsyte (June's grandfather, and by now the owner of the house Soames had built). This attachment gives Old Jolyon pleasure, but exhausts his strength. He leaves Irene money in his will with Young Jolyon, his son, as trustee. In the end Old Jolyon dies under an ancient oak tree in the garden of the Robin Hill house.

The three novels which make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle class Forsyte family between 1886 and 1920. Galsworthy's masterly narrative examines not only their fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women. This is the only critical edition of the work available, with Notes that explain contemporary artistic and literary allusions and define the slang of the time.

To Let, the final volume of the Forsyte trilogy, chronicles the continuing feuds of the two factions within the troubled Forsyte family. The shadow of the past returns to haunt the lives of a new generation, as Irene's son Jon falls in love with Soames' daughter Fleur with tragic consequences.

In 1930 Galsworthy published On Forsyte 'Change which deals in the main 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…" By way of explanation he says that "It is hard to part suddenly and finally from those with whom one has lived so long; and these footnotes do really, I think, help to fill in and round out the chronicles of the Forsyte family". Contents: The Buckles of Superior Dosset, 1821-1863 Sands of Time, 1821-1863 Hester's Little Tour, 1845 Timothy's Narrow Squeak, 1851 Aunt Juley's Courtship, 1855 Nicholas Rex, 1864 A Sad Affair, 1867 Revolt at Roger's, 1870 June's First Lame Duck, 1876 Dog at Timothy's, 1878 Midsummer Madness, 1880 The Hondekoeter, 1880 Cry of Peacock, 1883 Francie's Fourpenny Foreigner, 1888 Four-In-Hand Forsyte, 1890 The Sorrows of Tweetyman, 1895 The Dromios, 1900 A Forsyte Encounters the People, 1917 Soames and the Flag, 1914-1918

John Galsworthy, a Nobel Prize\-winning author, chronicles the ebbing social power of the commercial upper\-middle\-class Forsyte family through three generations, beginning in Victorian London during the 1880s and ending in the early 1920s.