#The Forsyte Saga: To Let

[thisbluespirit]

The train went on; and again Fleur leaned forward.  “I never let go,” she said; “do you?” // Jon shook his head vehemently.  “Never!” he said.  “Will you write to me?”

....Jon seized her hand in gratitude and they sat silent, with the world well lost, and one eye on the corridor.  But the train seemed to run twice as fast now, and its sound was almost lost in that of Jon’s sighing...  “We’re getting near,” said Fleur... “Oh!  Jon, don’t forget me.”

[angel-princess-anna]

DA Movie 3 Cast

(breaking this down so it's easier to figure out)

Confirmations as IN:

From the TV show: Robert, Cora, Mary, Edith, Bertie, Tom, Isobel, Dickie, Carson, Mrs Hughes, Anna, Bates, Thomas, Baxter, Molesley, Mrs Patmore, Andy, Daisy, Harold

From the films: Guy

New additions played by: Joely Richardson, Alessandro Nivola, Simon Russell Beale, Arty Froushan

(We know that Sybbie and George will appear thanks to the child actors' parents posting on Instagram.)

Who is NOT listed:

From the TV show who also appeared in at least one film: Matthew Goode (Henry Talbot), Paul Copley (Mr Mason), Samantha Bond (Rosamund) (and of course Maggie but I don't think Violet is appearing as a ghost)

From the films: Tuppence Middleton (Lucy), Imelda Staunton (Maud - but she already confirmed this)

Gonna be pedantic, but it's actually not quite proper grammatically to say "many other fan favorites" after the "exciting new additions", as it implies that somehow the fan favorites are new additions, but I assume does this mean someone will cameo. But also not like Paul didn't play Harold in the TV show lol.

Tuppence Middleton is filming The Forsyte Saga this summer, so I assume she's too busy to be in the film overall, but maybe Lucy will have a cameo? Don't know what this spells for Henry, but we'll see.

Also not listed is Shirley MacLaine is also not listed as Martha, Cora and Harold's mother in the TV show.

Let the speculations begin!

EDIT: I left off Dr Clarkson! He is not listed.

[otherpens]

Every now and then I remember I bought The Forsyte Saga on iTunes and if I wanted to I could just let Gina McKee fuck me up mentally for a solid twelve hours…

[coolcatkerr]

Jon + Fleur - "Don't give up on us Jon, please don't give up" (The Forsyte Saga)

"But we're meant for each other, we're meant to be!" 

"No, I don't think so." 

I watched this when I was 12 and was truly heartbroken when Jon and Fleur didn't end up together. 

Watching this almost every year since, you gain a better understanding of The Forsyte Saga as you get older, but still doesnt make this love story any less sad.   

This is the second series to the Forsyte Saga, if you have not seen either you should go watch as it's fantastic story and actors. You can watch it on BritBox atm, go do it! 

For those wishing a summary: 

Fleur and Jon Forsyte meet and fall in love, ignorant of their parents' past troubles, indiscretions and misdeeds (from season one of the show). Once Soames (Fleur's father), Jolyon, and Irene (Jon's parents') discover their romance, they forbid their children to see each other again. Knowing he is soon to die from a weak heart, Jolyon tells Jon the events of Irene's marriage to Soames, including her love affair with Philip Bosinney and Soames's rape of her and warns him that Irene would be alone if he were to marry Fleur.  When Jolyon suddenly dies of a heart attack Jon is left torn between the past and his present love for Fleur. He ultimately rejects Fleur, breaking his own heart as well as hers and leaves for America. Fleur marries Michael Mont, though she knows she doesn't love him, convinced that it is better to be in a loveless marriage than to be exposed to heartbreak. 

 Song: Novo Amor - Anchor

[frimleyblogger]

Book Corner – December 2020 (1)

Book Corner – January 2021 (1) - To Let by John Galsworthy, the conclusion to the Forsyte Saga trilogy

To Let – John Galsworthy

Going through my library on my Kindle I found that whilst I had read the first two books in Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga, Man of Property and In Chancery, I had not completed the trilogy. Looking for something different from my diet of Golden Age detective fiction, I decided to give the final part, To Let, published in 1921, a go. Galsworthy went on to write another six…

[aragarna]

Let’s Dance, part 2 - Glee 5x05, Forever 1x16, The Forsyte Saga 1x03

(part 1)

[topshelf2112-blog]

I originally named/started this blog with the intention of talking about books. Then the pandemic began and anxiety about keeping my students safe and about the well-being of my family dialed my not inconsiderable anxiety up to the point that concentrating on the potent spell cast by words on a page simply wasn’t in me. I typically read dozens of books (slowly) at the same time - but I found myself unable to even handle graphic novels.

The chaos of 2020-21 had a silver lining, though. While my interest in reading waned, I fell in love with a plucky Corporal and his patrician Major, began to write every day, and made some friends that I intend to keep with me until the end of the road. As I ease back into reading, however, I wanted to begin to dedicate some of this blog to books - read, borrowed, bought, or pre-ordered.

Since Maxwell Q. Klinger and Charles Emerson Winchester III have blessed me by featuring in so many stories, let’s kick things off with some Klingchestrian titles (hey, if scholars can say “Eliotian,” that is a completely fair adjective):

[A book I’m reading]

The Forsyte Saga - One of the late nineteenth-century works I meant to hit in graduate school, but never quite managed, this one looks at a wealthy family striving to maintain its standard of living as the world changes - and that feels very Winchester apropos to me!

[A recent purchase]

M*A*S*H in Iraq - a book of photographs that pairs moments from the classic tv show with shots of modern warfare to remind us how far we’ve not yet come.

[A pre-order]

The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes - While Klinger was written as a straight character who just enjoyed creating his costumes, I think he makes a fine early representative for the LGBTQIA+ community/ the Arabic community. This book looks at a case that might have sped up the cause for trans rights - if it had not been hidden.

[onelungmcclung]

Do you have any advice on writing rarepairs?

hmm, that’s an interesting question, and I am of course very flattered to be asked. it’s quite a broad question, so I’ll try to answer it as broadly as possible, and if I haven’t covered the aspects you had in mind feel free to drop back into my inbox. (you can always dm me, too, but if anon is more convenient/comfortable that’s fine. I’m happy with whatever works best for you.)

one of the perks of writing rarepairs, imo, is that by definition the dynamics haven’t been well explored, so you can approach the relationship in question with relatively fresh eyes. (fanon can be cumbersome.)

on a technical level, relationships -- of all kinds -- are an extremely powerful way to explore and communicate characterisation. by exploring an under-explored relationship, you can dig into under-explored aspects and hidden undercurrents in those characters. this is a) incredibly rewarding and b) develops each character as a whole.

so, the implication of that is: characterisation in fanfiction is key. in some ways, fic gives you an advantage because you don’t start from scratch. the disadvantage is that people will notice if your writing isn’t in-character. the key points of getting into character -- for writers as for actors -- are attention to detail, imagination, and sensitivity. (avoid writing yourself into characters; let them inhabit the space as fully as possible.) look out for character interactions that interest you, that you enjoy, that you’d like to see more of; and then examine what precisely intrigues you and what those interactions indicate about the characters, individually and in relation to each other, and think about how this dynamic might play out in other scenes/settings.

(disclaimer: I generally prefer canonverse to AUs, so my advice may be skewed towards canonverse fics. but I figure it’s best to start by thinking about the relationship in canon, and then you can always translate that dynamic into other settings.)

with regard to the hbowar rarepairs I’ve written, there hasn’t, as I recall, been a highly sophisticated thought process behind them. (for example, blindness started with “hey marc warren is a really good actor and everyone’s ignoring blithe”; december started with “this dynamic seems fun, there’s no mcclung fic, and wait is he talking to himself”; and, showing me at my most incisive, days go by started with “there just isn’t enough nco fic”.) sometimes I just think other people have written the ship/characters wrong and I need to go stick my definitive oar in. I usually begin with a mood and an image and just start writing and watch the story gradually reveal itself, and that’s a highly unpredictable, instinctual approach to writing. other people write differently. I can’t really advise on approach; hopefully you already have one that works for you; if not, keep writing until you find one that does.

anyway, the world of rarepairs is your oyster. run with it; have fun with it. write anything that gets its hooks into you, even if you think nobody else will care. (in my experience, there are always people who care, and I really thought I was out on my own when ao3 had to create the “forsyte saga - all media types” category for me.) if you’re not sure what you’re doing, don’t put pressure on yourself to finish anything or be perfect; just write and see what happens. maybe you give someone a new otp; maybe you accidentally give yourself a new otp. feel free to come back and cry about that.

[manuscripts-dontburn]

Mid-Year Book Freakout 2020

Best book you’ve read so far in 2020: this is a tie between HAMNET (Maggie O´Farrell) and DAISY JONES & THE SIX (Taylor Jenkins Reed)

Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2020: DOWN AMONG THE STICKS AND BONES (Seanan McGuire)

New release you haven’t read yet but want to: THE OTHER BENNET GIRL (Janice Hadlow) 

Most anticipated release for the second half of the year: A DEADLY EDUCATION (Naomi Novik)

Favourite new author (debut or new to you): Maggie O´Farrell

Biggest disappointment: unfortunately there were quite a few. Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly. The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth by Pullman. Mermaid Moon by Susann Cokal. Take Courage by Samatha Ellis. Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi.

Biggest surprise: LOVELY WAR by Julie Berry. It just... sucked me in and made me feel things. I had a feeling it would be good, but I had no idea I would love it so much.

Book that made you happy: Well, LOVELY WAR. But also HOW TO BE A GOOD CREATURE by Sy Montgomery.

Newest fictional crush/newest favourite character: Imma gonna go with Julie  d'Aubigny from the GODDESS (Kelly Gardiner)

Book that made you cry: KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER by Sigrid Undset. Those last few chapters were heartwrenching.

Favourite book to film adaptation you saw this year: Emma, hands down.

The most beautiful book you’ve bought or received this year so far: Look, I have purchased do many gloriously beautiful book I have a hard time choosing. Let´s just mention a few: Hamnet. The Illness Lesson. The Mercies. Conjure Women. Miss Austen. Clap When You Land.

Book you need to read by the end of the year: so. many. The Forsyte Saga. My Dark Vanessa.  The Color Purple. The Underground Railroad. A Tale of Two Cities. The Splendid and the Vile. A Long Petal of the Sea. The list really doesn´t have an end.

[swainbybooks]

The Forsyte Chronicles by John Galsworthy

The Forsyte Chronicles includes 9 novels and several interludes. It is divided into three trilogies: 1. The Forsyte Saga (The Man of Property, In Chancery and To Let) 2. A Modern Comedy (The White Monkey, The Silver Spoon and Swan Song) 3. End of the Chap... more

Offered By Swainby Books

[ladystrallan]

Here are some of my thoughts about the 2002 The Forsyte Saga before I start my rewatch! Let’s see if my opinions change!

- I absolutely HATE Soames. I may be a bit biased because I used to be friends with someone exactly like him, and the friendship did not end well. Like seriously it’s scary how much this guy is like Soames. The mannerisms and everything are identical (they even look alike) so obviously I didn’t like him from the beginning. Not to mention his atrocious behaviour throughout the show (especially to Irene) I feel so bad for Irene and Annette for having to be married to him, and I feel bad for Winifred for having to be his sister. The actor’s performance is great though, like props to him for playing such a realistic jerk

- My fave characters are the Darties (Loved them since their first scene, I used to call Monty “mustachio”) and Old Jolyon (he’s probably the only character who has never done anything wrong)

- I love how Monty calls everyone ‘old boy’, ‘old chap’, ‘old man’, or anything with old in front of it? It’s so funny to me

Spoilers ahead:

I was absolutely DEVASTATED when Monty died. Like he had just turned things around with his gambling addiction, and really wanted to repair things with Freddie :( He was going to take her on vacation… brb so I can cry :(

[thisbluespirit]

Suzanne Neve as Holly Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga (BBC 1967), with Kenneth More as Jolyon Forsyte.

[fuzzysparrow]

'The Forsyte Saga' is a trilogy published between 1906 and 1921 by the English author John Galsworthy (1867-1933). They tell the story of a large upper-middle-class English family, particularly their financial status. In the first book 'The Man of Property' (1906) the author focuses on one member of the family, Soames Forsyte, and his desire to gain possessions. He treats his wife Irene as something he owns and is jealous of her friendships and wants her to be his alone.

The second and third books in the trilogy are called 'In Chancery' (1920) and 'To Let' (1921), however, Galsworthy wrote two interludes between each publication: 'Indian Summer of a Forsyte' (1918) and 'Awakening' (1920). The books have been adapted numerous times for film, television and radio, for example 'That Forsyte Woman' (1949) starring Errol Flynn (1909-1959) as Soames.

Galsworthy wrote a sequel trilogy to 'The Forsyte Saga' called 'A Modern Comedy', between the years 1924 to 1928. Galsworthy followed this with a third trilogy called 'End of the Chapter'.

Through his writings, Galsworthy campaigned for a variety of causes, including prison reform, women's rights, and animal welfare, and also against censorship. 'The Forsyte Saga' earned John Galsworthy the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. He was too ill to attend the Nobel Prize presentation ceremony and died seven weeks later.

[autumncottageattic]

Day 26 #marchmeetthemaker - Books, blogs and podcast

I don't like podcast at all. All the blogs I like are in english and I would really love to read it, but it is difficult for me to translate long and complex texts into my native language, so usually I don't read it but look at the pictures lol Books! I love to read, I love books forever-ever. And as long as I have no idea what to write today, let it be a long (but still short) list of my favorite books (I'm not sure that someone will read this, but still:)

1. Series of novels about Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery 2. "The Master and Margarita" by russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov 3. "Pygmalion" by Bernard Shaw 4. "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh 5. "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen (of course:) 6. "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck 7. "My Antonia" by Willa Cather 8. "The Forsyte Saga" by John Galsworthy 9. "The Woodlanders" and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy (but to be honest I like all of his books) 10. "Pollyanna" by Eleanor Porter 11. "Je l'aimais, J'ai lu" and "35 kilos d'espoir" by Anna Gavalda 12. Witches Series by Terry Pratchett 13. "Under the Tuscan sun" by Frances Mayes 14. "The Railway Children" by Edith Nesbit 15. Susan Coolidge series of "What Katy Did" 16. "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett 17. "The Scapegoat" and "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier 18. "Mio nonno era un ciliegio" by Angela Nanetti 19. "A Year in Provence" by Peter Mayle 20. Many of O.Henry's short stories, but "The Ransom of Red Chief" and a "Peach" I truly adore 21. "The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey" by Susan Wojciechowski 22. "Jennie Gerhardt" by Theodore Dreiser 23. "Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man", "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe", "Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!" by Fannie Flagg 24. "The Shell Seekers" by Rosamunde Pilcher and her other books 25. "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach 26. "Nobody's boy" by Hector Malot 27. "The Canterville Ghost" and "Lady Windermere's Fan" by Oscar Wilde 28. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee 29. "Ball of fat" and "Bel Ami or The History of a Scoundrel" by Guy de Maupassant 30. "The Painted Veil" and "Theatre" by Somerset Maugham 31. "Znachor" by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz 32. All books of Jack London 33. "Little Zaches, Great Zinnober" by E. Hoffmann 34. "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë 35. "Pollyanna" by Eleanor H. Porter 36. “The Pursuit of Love” by Nancy Mitford 37. "My Family and Other Animals" by Gerald Durrell

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[originaldetectivesheep]

Hell Year In Review - Stuff I Mostly Read With The Page Down Key In 2020

Last year, I rejoiced about positive change that came from reading less churny Gutenbergs and more modern authors, more women, and more authors of color from the library.  Then the library closed for most of 6 months starting on 11 March.

I read a monstrous 907 book-shaped things this year, in exceptionally great proportion out of the Gutenberg bucket.  There was a LOT of churn there: I started the year with 2666 items after the reload alluded to in last year's post and finished with 1761 after processing 1290.  There was a lot of pap.  There was a lot of extremely bad pap.  But it wasn't all pap, and it wasn't all bad.

By way of illustration: those 907 books broke out into 59 modern/physical books, 13 issues of Strange Horizons (no real need to dissect these), and 835 off the Gutenberg pile.  Among moderns, women wrote/contributed to 32/59 (54%), authors of color wrote/contributed to 6/59 (10%), and authors in translation furnished 4/59 (7%).  Favorites in this small sample looked like:

Catherine Chung - Forgotten Country Elizabeth J. Church - The Atomic Weight of Love Hal Clement - Iceworld Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell J. M. Coetzee - Waiting For the Barbarians Claire G. Coleman - Terra Nullius Pat Conroy - The Lords of Discipline Anne Corlett - The Space Between the Stars Jennine Capo Crucet - Make Your Home Among Strangers Ivan E. Coyote - One In Every Crowd N. K. Jemisin - The City We Became

This was not a bad batch of books to read this year.  But, it's about a third the size of the similar haul from 2019, and the Gutenberg haul was so large and so comprehensive as to get a lot of quality material in with the junk.  Of 823 limited-authorship titles from Gutenberg, women wrote or contributed to 111 (13%), a better rate than 2019 overall (despite 10 months of library there vs 0), and though authors of color only contributed 7 books (<1%), the 33 translations and non-English-language books represented 4% of the total, again an advance on last year despite 2019's numbers counting the library.  The highlights of the Gutenberg side looked like:

Henri Barbusse - The Inferno Aphra Behn - Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave Lord Byron - Don Juan Willa Cather - The Professor's House Mary Cholmondeley - Red Pottage Kate Chopin - The Awakening Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim Stephen Crane - Wounds in the Rain Ford Madox Ford - No More Parades John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga [The Man of Property / In Chancery / To Let] Mary Gaunt - Kirkham's Find Maxim Gorky - Mother Thea Von Harbou - Metropolis Alexander Harris - Settlers and Convicts E. T. A. Hoffman - The Golden Flower Pot Sarah Orne Jewett - The Country of the Pointed Firs Rudyard Kipling - Kim Sinclair Lewis - Kingsblood Royal David Lindsay - The Haunted Woman Edward Lording - There And Back Kálmán Mikszáth - St. Peter's Umbrella L M Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables Frederick Niven - The Flying Years O. E. Rölvaag - Giants in the Earth May Sinclair - Mary Olivier: A Life Olaf Stapledon - Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Theodor Storm - The Rider on the White Horse H.G. Wells - In The Days Of The Comet H.G. Wells - Mr. Britling Sees It Through H.G. Wells - The War in the Air Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

There are three Nobel laureates (Kipling, Lewis, Galsworthy) in this list, and two more nominees (Wells, Gorky) who didn't make it to the top, versus only one (Coetzee) in the other.  This is also not a bad batch of books to read this year; the rebuild last January to get more non-genre stuff made the highs a lot higher.  Sturgeon's Law remains true at all scales and throughout history, but when you read 800 fucking Gutenbooks in a year, you’re going to get a bunch of good in with all of the bad.

This does turn kind of into "comfort in sadness", because many of the other 792 limited-authorship Gutenbooks I read in 2020 were utter trash.  I read thirteen things from Albert Dorrington stitching like a hundred uncollected short stories into coherent wholes, and all of them were bad.  I had ten books from Edward Dyson, and they were all full of bad dialect.  I'm almost thirty volumes deep in various pulps from Emile C. Tepperman that are a lot more entertaining than good.  Many of Miles Franklin's twelve books on the list were a pain, as were practically all of Stewart Edward White's twelve mixing spiritualism and old California.  Virtually all of Warwick Deeping's thirteen very large gurn piles sucked, and the only use of most of the 30 volumes I had to grind up from William Le Queux was to laugh at them.  And finally, I suffered through 80 books by Fergus Hume this year, and got so mad that I wrote a Twitter thread to call him out as the worst possible author in the history of the English language.

However, Hume is over.  I'm never going to read/need to read him again.  And even if I continue not getting over my feud with the library (I really ought to), the routine that I've established allows me to project good things for the next year.  I've got eight more from L M Montgomery, Marjorie Bowen is up next in the "large major" slot after Tepperman, and later in the year I should get to Eugene O'Neill, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, and Zane Grey.  I'm reading from a limited selection of Dostoevsky on my Kindle right now, and sooner or later should also get to Jonathan Swift, Jules Verne, Mary Shelley (I missed Frankenstein in 2016), Anne Bronte, Herman Melville, Havelock Ellis, George Gissing, and maybe Damon Runyon by this time next year.  There are going to be other discoveries like Gaunt, Cholmondeley, and Rölvaag.  And yes, I will need to grind through a lot of bad garbage to get to them: but there's still enough good, in all of this, to keep on going.

[biblioncollection]

To Let (Forsyte Saga Vol. 3) | John Galsworthy | General Fiction, Romance | Audiobook full unabridged | English | 1/6 Content of the video and Sections beginning time (clickable) - Chapters of the audiobook: please see First comments under this video. ‘The Forsyte Saga’ is the story of a wealthy London family stretching from the eighteen-eighties until the nineteen-twenties.To Let is the third and final book in the saga (although Galsworthy later published two further trilogies which extend the story). We are now in 1920, about twenty years since Irene married Young Jolyon and gave birth to John and since Soames married Annette, who gave him a daughter, Fleur. The two sides of the family have not met since those times and John and Fleur do not even know of each other’s existence.All the old Forsytes are dead except for Timothy. Val and Holly have returned from South Africa and Val is training racehorses in Sussex. June has opened her gallery near Cork Street.Soames arranges to meet Fleur at June’s gallery and while there, and again later in a patisserie, they see Irene and Jon. Soames ignores them but Fleur and Jon are attracted to one another at a distance. As they leave, Fleur drops her handkerchief... (Summary by Andy Minter) This is a Librivox recording. If you want to volunteer please visit https://librivox.org/ by Priceless Audiobooks