The Apple Tree: Tales from Caravan (Nonsuch Classics)
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Book Description
Written by the author of The Forsyte Saga, Caravan is a collection of 56 short stories composed between the years 1900 and 1923. The Apple Tree comprises the first twenty-four tales of this collection. For the majority of the stories the author grouped works of a similar theme in pairs, one from before 1914, the other written after 1914, in a deliberate attempt to illustrate how his ideas and technique changed over time. The stories themselves encompass a wide range of topics and emotions, from despair and death to salvation and hope, and there is even an appearance by the Forsyte family. Written in Galsworthy's descriptive and engaging manner, this collection is a thought-provoking and entertaining body of work.
About the Author
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 (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.
The Apple Tree (Nonsuch Classics),John Galsworthy,Nonsuch Publishing, Limited,1845880137,Classics,Fiction,Fiction - General,Literary,Literature: Classics,Short Stories (single author),FICTION_SHORT STORIES (single author),Fiction / Short Stories (single author),Modern fiction,Short stories
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