The Forsyte Saga - Sequels

Sequels

Galsworthy's own sequel to The Forsyte Saga came in A Modern Comedy, written in the years 1924 to 1928. This comprises a novel, The White Monkey, an interlude, A Silent Wooing, a second novel, The Silver Spoon, a second interlude, Passers By, and a third novel Swan Song. The principal characters are Soames and Fleur, and the second saga ends with the death of Soames in 1926. This is also the point reached at the end of the 1967 television series, but Galsworthy wrote one further trilogy, End of the Chapter, comprising Maid in Waiting, Flowering Wilderness, and Over the River, also known as One More River, chiefly dealing with Michael Mont's young cousin, Dinny Cherrell.

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".

In 1994, Suleika Dawson wrote a sequel to The Forsytes called The Forsytes: the Saga Continues in which Soames's daughter, Fleur, Lady Mont, is the main character. She has been a dutiful wife and mother, and had long forgotten her love for Jon Forsyte. But when tragedy brings Jon back to England, Fleur is determined to recapture the past—and the love of her life.