John Galsworthy was one of the great British writers of the early 20th century, and won a Nobel Prize for his work. Galsworthy was a dramatist of considerable technical skill. His plays often took up specific social grievances such as the double standard of justice as applied to the upper and lower classes; and the confrontation of capital and labor.

Justice, originally published in 1910, was his most famous play, and led to a prison reform in England.