Background
Ford Madox Ford was born on December 17, 1873, in Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom, to Catherine Madox Brown and Francis Hueffer, the eldest of three children.
(Novelist, poet, literary critic, editor, a founding fathe...)
Novelist, poet, literary critic, editor, a founding father of English Modernism, and one of the most significant novelists of the twentieth century, Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was the author of over eighty books, editor of The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, and collaborator with Joseph Conrad on The Inheritors, Romance, and other works. His most famous novel is The Good Soldier (1915). This collection contains essays and letters on the English novel, impressionism, vers libre, Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, Henry James, Herbert Read, and Ernest Hemingway.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803254547/?tag=2022091-20
(This 900-page survey of world literature, "From Confucius...)
This 900-page survey of world literature, "From Confucius' Day to Our Own" (as the subtitle reads), was the last book written by Ford Madox Ford, one of the seminal figures of the modernist period. Written for general readers rather than scholars and first published in 1938, The March of Literature is a working novelist's view of what is valuable in literature, and why. Convinced that scholars and teachers give a false sense of literature, Ford brings alive the pleasures of reading by writing about books he is passionate about. Beginning at the beginning - with ancient Egyptian and Chinese literature and the Bible - Ford works his way through classical literature, the writings of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, continuing up to the major writers of his own day like Ezra Pound, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad. With his encyclopedic reading and expertise in the techniques of writing, Ford is a reliable and entertaining guide. Ford also includes a chapter on publishers and booksellers, noting the key roles they play in literature's existence. Novelist Alexander Theroux (Darconville's Cat, An Adultery) has written an insightful introduction for this reissue, the first time this monumental book has been made available in paperback.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1564780511/?tag=2022091-20
(Ford Madox Ford’s novel about the doomed Katharine Howard...)
Ford Madox Ford’s novel about the doomed Katharine Howard, fifth queen of Henry VIII, is a neglected masterpiece. Kat Howard—intelligent, beautiful, naively outspoken, and passionately idealistic—catches the eye of Henry VIII and improbably becomes his fifth wife. A teenager who has grown up far from court, she is wholly unused to the corruption and intrigue that now surround her. It is a time of great upheaval, as unscrupulous courtiers maneuver for power while religious fanatics—both Protestant and Catholic—fight bitterly for their competing beliefs. Soon Katharine is drawn into a perilous showdown with Thomas Cromwell, the much-feared Lord Privy Seal, as her growing influence over the King begins to threaten too many powerful interests. Originally published in three parts (The Fifth Queen, Privy Seal, and The Fifth Queen Crowned), Ford’s novel serves up both a breathtakingly visual evocation of the Tudor world and a timeless portrayal of the insidious operations of power and fear in any era.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307744914/?tag=2022091-20
(Ford Madox Ford published this trilogy between 1905 and 1...)
Ford Madox Ford published this trilogy between 1905 and 1907, and, part of a wave of such texts, it investigates England and Englishness. It does so with originality, in the impressionist style, in ways that provide an introduction to the work of this seminal modernist writer.
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(Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant, unconventional mathema...)
Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant, unconventional mathematician, is married to the dazzling yet unfaithful Sylvia when, during a turbulent weekend, he meets a young Suffragette by the name of Valentine Wannop. Christopher and Valentine are on the verge of becoming lovers until he must return to his World War I regiment. Ultimately, Christopher, shell-shocked and suffering from amnesia, is sent back to London. An unforgettable exploration of the tensions of a society confronting catastrophe, sexuality, power, madness, and violence, this narrative examines time and a critical moment in history.
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(In The Soul of London (1905) Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) ...)
In The Soul of London (1905) Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) gives a vivid impression of the excitement and challenge of the greatest city of modern times.In its evocation of the growth of London over the centuries and the bewildering variety of the city scene by day and night, the glamour and frivolity of its 'high' life and the hardship and endurance of its working people The Soul of London displays a stylishness and humanity which make it a work of imaginative literature and not a guide book. It is also a prophetic survey of the way modernsociety was developing, and foreshadows the social isolation, anonymity and alienation which were to transform the forms and substance of literature in the twentieth century.
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(First published as four separate novels (Some Do Not . . ...)
First published as four separate novels (Some Do Not . . ., No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up—, and The Last Post) between 1924 and 1928, Parade’s End explores the world of the English ruling class as it descends into the chaos of war. Christopher Tietjens is an officer from a wealthy family who finds himself torn between his unfaithful socialite wife, Sylvia, and his suffragette mistress, Valentine. A profound portrait of one man’s internal struggles during a time of brutal world conflict, Parade’s End bears out Graham Greene’s prediction that “There is no novelist of this century more likely to live than Ford Madox Ford.”
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(In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Good Soldier 30th ...)
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Good Soldier 30th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Set just before World War I, the novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, through a rather unreliable narrator; for as it turns out, the story is not what we are led to believe at the beginning. The novel’s original title was “The Saddest Story”, from the novels opening lines “This is the saddest story I have ever heard”; however, with the onset of World War I, the publishers asked Ford for a new title, to which he sarcastically suggested “The Good Soldier”, and so it was named.
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Ford Madox Ford was born on December 17, 1873, in Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom, to Catherine Madox Brown and Francis Hueffer, the eldest of three children.
Ford was educated in England, Germany, and especially France, and it is said that he first thought out his novels in French.
By the age of 22 Ford had written four books, including a fairy tale, The Brown Owl, written when he was 17 and published when he was 19. In 1898 Joseph Conrad, on the recommendation of William Ernest Henley, suggested that Ford become his collaborator, and the result was collaboration on The Inheritors (1901), Romance (1903), parts of Nostromo, and The Nature of a Crime. Ford's Joseph Conrad (1924) discusses the techniques they used.
In 1908 Ford began the periodical English Review in order to publish Thomas Hardy's "The Sunday Morning Tragedy, " which had been rejected everywhere else. Other contributors included Conrad, William James, W. H. Hudson, John Galsworthy, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Norman Douglas, Wyndham Lewis, H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence, and Anatole France. After World War I Ford founded the Transatlantic Review, which numbered among its contributors James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway.
In 1914 Ford published what he intended to be his last novel, The Good Soldier. Out of his experiences in wartime England and service in a Welsh regiment, he then wrote the series of novels that is chiefly responsible for his high reputation: Some Do Not, No More Parades, and A Man Could Stand Up, published in 1924-1926, and the final volume, The Last Post, published in 1928. The view of war in these has been described as detached and disenchanted, and the novels are innovative as well as traditional. His novels were not widely read, but a revival of interest in his work began with New Directions 1942, a symposium by distinguished writers, dedicated to his memory. His war tetralogy was republished in 1950-1951 as Parade's End, along with The Good Soldier.
In his later years Ford preferred life in Provence and the United States, spending his last years as a teacher at Olivet College in Michigan with the professed aim of restoring the lost art of reading. Ford wrote more than 60 books. Among these works were volumes of poetry, critical studies (The English Novel: From the Earliest Days to the Death of Joseph Conrad, 1929; Return to Yesterday, 1932), and memoirs (It Was the Nightingale, 1933; Mightier Than the Sword, 1938).
Ford Madox Ford died on July 26, 1939, at Deauville, France.
(Novelist, poet, literary critic, editor, a founding fathe...)
(Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant, unconventional mathema...)
(This 900-page survey of world literature, "From Confucius...)
(Determined not to write a biography about his friend Jose...)
(In The Soul of London (1905) Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) ...)
(Ford Madox Ford published this trilogy between 1905 and 1...)
(In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Good Soldier 30th ...)
(Ford Madox Ford’s novel about the doomed Katharine Howard...)
(First published as four separate novels (Some Do Not . . ...)
Quotations:
"There is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. "
"In every man there are two minds that work side by side, the one checking the other; thus emotion stands against reason, intellect corrects passion and first impressions act a little, but very little, before quick reflection. "
Ford Madox Ford married his school girlfriend Elsie Martindale in Gloucester. The couple had two daughters, Christina and Katharine.
Francis Hueffer was a German-English writer on music, music critic, and librettist.
Catherine Madox Brown Hueffer was an artist and model associated with the Pre-Raphaelites.
Oliver Madox Hueffer was an author, playwright and war correspondent.
