John Galsworthys Compassion

This book discusses John Galsworthy's compassion for people and animals, in his fiction, non-fiction and drama. Initial chapters explore compassion in The Forsyte Saga and The Modern Comedy, and his parents' influence. Other chapters examine his works helping prison reform, men and children disabled during the First World War, and people whose relatives were interned as war-time alien enemies. Two chapters focus on slum clearance and labour unrest during the twentieth century's first three decades. Another two concentrate on animal welfare and vivisection. The final chapter attempts to appraise Galsworthy as a writer by looking at what commentators past and present have said, and at what constitutes literature. Jill Felicity Durey is a retired Honorary Associate Professor at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. Her publications include: Degrees of Intimacy: Cousin Marriage and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (2014), Trollope and the Church of England (2002), and Realism and Narrative Modality: The Hero and Heroine in Eliot, Tolstoy and Flaubert (1993).