As a dramatist, he became known for plays with a social message, reflecting, among other themes, the struggle of workers against exploitation, the use of solitary confinement in prisons, the repression of women, jingoism and the politics and morality of war.

As well as writing plays and novels with social messages, Galsworthy campaigned continually for a wide range of causes about which he felt strongly, from animal welfare to prison reform, censorship and workers' rights.

[4] In the class-conscious mid-Victorian era, Blanche Galsworthy saw herself as being from a higher social stratum than her husband's comparatively nouveau riche family, and this, together with a 20-year age gap between them, made for an uneasy relationship.

He became the model for Old Jolyon, the patriarch in The Forsyte Saga;[7] looking back, Galsworthy said in 1919, "I was so truly and deeply fond of him that I seemed not to have a fair share of love left to give to my mother".

[14] He joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society, and acted in other amateur productions, in one of which he fell in love with a fellow performer, Sybil Carlisle (later a professional actress); his ardent feelings were not reciprocated, which caused him much angst.

His father arranged further foreign trips to distract him from his emotional troubles and to develop his legal education by studying aspects of maritime law at close quarters with a view to specialising in it once back at home.

[20] An obituarist in 1933 commented that despite Galsworthy's distaste for the legal profession, his study of the law left a permanent mark on his fiction, in which there are numerous court scenes, mostly leading to an outcome that does more harm than good.

[32][33] The Island Pharisees (1904), addressing the effects of poverty and the constraints of convention − themes with which Galsworthy became much associated − received considerable praise,[34] but it was a further two years until he had his first outstanding successes.

[35] In March his novel The Man of Property was published by William Heinemann, and in December Harley Granville-Barker directed The Silver Box at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

[44] His novels in the interim included Fraternity (1909), a critique of the artificial veneer of urban life, and The Dark Flower (1913), depicting the disruptive, but sometimes creative, effects of love.

[45] Although throughout his career Galsworthy supported no political party, The Silver Box was seen as putting him alongside Bernard Shaw and Granville-Barker as a playwright with a strong social message.

[46] Not all the early plays had overt political or polemical themes: Joy (1907) is a study of a young woman's attempts to cope with the inadequacies of her parents,[47] and The Fugitive (1913) depicts a marriage collapsing from the incompatibility of the couple.

But Strife (1909) depicts the struggle of workers in a Cornish tin mine against exploitation by the employers;[48] Justice (1910) attacks the use of solitary confinement in prisons;[48] the theme of The Eldest Son (1912) is the repression of women both in the family and society;[48] The Mob (1914) focuses on jingoism and the politics and morality of war.

He supported prison reform, women's rights, a minimum wage and animal welfare, and opposed censorship, exploitation of workers, blood sports and aerial warfare.

"[59] At the St Martin's Theatre, London, in 1920 Galsworthy had his first big box-office success with The Skin Game, depicting the clash between old and new money, attempted blackmail, and the effect of unrestrained capitalism on the lives of ordinary people.

Reviews were generally favourable, although The Evening Standard said that the author's dramatic genius lent undeserved credibility to an essentially unrealistic plot, and The Observer commented that instead of seeing the good in both sides of an argument as he usually did, Galsworthy here depicted the bad in both.

[65] A month later the International PEN Club (standing for "Poets, Essayists, Novelists") was founded in London, with Galsworthy as its president, a position he held for the rest of his life.

[70] At Bury the Galsworthys entertained his friends and colleagues, including Arnold Bennett and Hugh Walpole; the latter was much taken with the house: "really lovely, with pearl-grey stone fronting lawns that run straight to the open fields ... Everything artistic ...

[74] Over the following three years he received honorary degrees from five universities, including Oxford, where he delivered the 1931 Romanes Lecture taking as his subject "Shakespeare and Spiritual Life".

[78] He was by then too ill to go to Stockholm for the presentation, and died at his London home on 31 January 1933, aged 65, from a combination of causes including cerebral thrombosis, arterial sclerosis and a possible brain tumour.

[79] After a private funeral and cremation, a memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey, attended by members of the Cabinet including the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, European ambassadors, fellow authors including Sir James Barrie, Laurence Binyon, Walter de la Mare and Sir Arthur Pinero, and representatives of numerous charities that Galsworthy had supported.

[84] He further offended conservatives by his attacks on imperialism; in The Island Pharisees he wrote, "Why should we, a small portion of the world's population, assume that our standards are the proper ones for every kind of race?

The last group in Fréchet's summary of Galsworthy's classifications consists of the final trilogy: Maid in Waiting (1931), Flowering Wilderness (1932) and Over the River (completed in 1932).

[83] Fréchet comments that the recurring themes of Galsworthy's novels are, in order of importance: beauty, love and suffering, divorce, honour, art and the law.

The Times commented that Galsworthy was a dramatist of power with more feeling than Shaw, if less wit, "and as keen a sense of social anomalies, if less readiness to offer theories by which they might be remedied.

Two were his adaptations of earlier short stories: The First and the Last (1921) and Old English (1924), which dealt respectively with murder and suicide—the latter by the unconventional method of overeating: the play culminates in the death of the central character, who, faced with imminent ruin and disgrace, defies his doctor's orders and deliberately eats a fatally rich and elaborate dinner, with many courses and as many wines.

Windows (1923), centring on a vicious young woman, led the reviewer in The Times to quote Samuel Johnson: "Sir, do not accustom your mind to confound virtue and vice.

[98] Walpole described him as "gentle, honest and just" and "absolutely good-hearted ... a dear",[99] although somewhat over-serious: "A dinner with Galsworthy, Lucas, and Granville-Barker was quite fun although J. G. never sees a joke".

[100] P. G. Wodehouse confirmed this reputation for seriousness; he wrote that Galsworthy abominated desultory conversation, and when he and his wife were entertaining dinner guests he would announce, as they sat down, a topic that would be discussed during the meal, such as "To what extent is genius influenced by the educational standards of parents?

[3] But in Hart-Davis's view, in the later novels Galsworthy had to rely on his creative imagination, "which by itself wasn't powerful enough to mask his ignorance of his juniors: perhaps if he'd had children the later books would have rung truer.