Before You Begin

Before you begin.

In John Galsworthy's England, the green countryside is no refuge from conflict. The Freelands are a large, quarrelsome family whose members carry their principles into London drawing rooms, village cottages and the fields of a country estate. At Joyfields and beyond it, questions of land, labour and personal freedom become impossible to keep politely separate.

The novel moves between generations and social worlds. Derek, Nedda, Felix, Tod and their relations each meet a different version of the same pressure: how much can a person owe to family, property or custom before loyalty becomes a form of confinement? The labourers' struggle at the edge of the estate gives those private choices a public consequence.

First published in 1915, The Freelands belongs to Galsworthy's great sequence of English social novels. This illustrated edition maps its country houses, roads, cottages and families without revealing the later turns of the story. Each chapter's recap unlocks only after that chapter has been read.