Maid in Waiting is the first novel in the third and final trilogy of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Chronicles. In this seventh installment, the story continues the lives and times, loves and losses, and fortunes and deaths of the fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians, the Forsytes. The trilogy here begun is called End of the Chapter and concerns the cousins of the younger Forsytes, the Cherrells.
The Forsyte Chronicles has become established as one of the most popular and enduring works of twentieth-century literature, described by the New York Times as "a social satire of epic proportions and one that does not suffer by comparison with Thackeray's Vanity Fair...[A] comedy of manners, convincing both in its fidelity to life and as a work of art."
John Galsworthy (1867–1933), English novelist and playwright, went to Oxford to study law but turned to literature after he met Joseph Conrad on a voyage. The Man of Property (1906), the first of the Forsyte Chronicles, established his reputation. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.
David Case (a.k.a. Frederick Davidson) (1932–2005) was born in London and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He performed in BBC radio plays before coming to America in 1976. The narrator of more than eight hundred audiobooks, he garnered numerous Earphones Awards and a Grammy nomination for his readings. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 1997.