Ford Madox Ford

Max Saunders

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781789147018
• eBook ISBN: 9781789147339
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

A critical biography of the great modernist editor and novelist. Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939) lived among several of the most important artists and writers of his time. Raised by Pre-Raphaelites and friends with Henry James, H. G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad, Ford was a leading figure of the avant-garde in pre-WWI London, responsible for publishing Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and D. H. Lawrence. After the war, he moved to Paris, published Gertrude Stein, and discovered Ernest Hemingway. A prolific writer in his own right, Ford wrote the modernist triumph The Good Soldier (1915) as well as one of the finest war stories in English, the Parade's End tetralogy (1924–1928). Drawing on newly discovered letters and photographs, this critical biography further demonstrates Ford's vital contribution to modern fiction, poetry, and criticism.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Youth: A Pre-Raphaelite Prodigy; Marriage to Elsie Martindale, 1873–94
• 2 Cosmopolitan Countryside: Impressionism on the Romney Marsh; Breakdown, 1894–1905
• 3 Edwardian London, the English Review and Violet Hunt, 1905–13
• 4 Impressionism, Modernist Poetics and The Good Soldier, 1913–15
• 5 War and Post-War Reconstruction: Stella Bowen, Paris, the transatlantic review, New York, 1915–29
• 6 Parade’s End: The Novelist as Historian of His Own Time, 1924–8
• Coda: ‘A Franco-American Writer’: Surviving the Depression with Janice Biala, 1930–39
• References
• Select Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Photo Acknowledgements