"The Forsyte Saga, Volume I" by John Galsworthy is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921. The work chronicles an upper-middle-class English family keenly aware of their "new money" status. At its center is Soames Forsyte, a solicitor who views himself as a "man of property" through his accumulation of possessions—including his beautiful wife Irene. His obsessive desire to own and control leads to jealousy, forbidden love, and tragic consequences that ripple across generations, entangling his daughter and cousin in the family's troubled past.