The Man of Property, by John Galsworthy

Preface

“The Forsyte Saga” was the title originally destined for that part of it which is called “The Man of Property”; and toadopt it for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged the Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us. Theword 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 statureand blood-thirstiness of old days, as they have come down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the folk of the old Sagas wereForsytes, assuredly, in their possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of beauty and passion asSwithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon. And if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to startle out from theirsurroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then theprime force, and that “family” and the sense of home and property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent effortsto “talk them out.”