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Ford, Ford Madox, 1873-1939

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Ford Madox Ford

Pseudonym: Ford Hermann Hueffer, Ford Madox Hueffer
Born: December 17, 1873(1873-12-17)
Merton, Surrey
Died: June 26, 1939 (aged 65)
Deauville, France
Occupation: novelist, publisher
Nationality: English
Writing period: 1892 - 1971
Debut works: The Shifting of the Fire

Ford Madox Ford (December 17, 1873 – June 26, 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English-language literature. He is now best remembered for The Good Soldier (1915) and the Parade's End tetralogy.

Born Ford Hermann Hueffer, he was Ford Madox Hueffer before he finally settled on the name Ford Madox Ford in honour of his grandfather, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown, whose biography he had written.

Ford's novels

One of his most famous works is The Good Soldier (1915), a short novel set just before World War I which chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two "perfect couples" using intricate flashbacks. In a "Dedicatory Letter to Stella Ford” that prefaces the novel, Ford reports that a friend pronounced The Good Soldier “the finest French novel in the English language!”

Ford also wrote the tetralogy Parade's End (1924-1928), set in England and on the Western Front in World War I, where he served as an officer in the Welch Regiment, a life vividly depicted in the novels.

Both The Good Soldier and Parade's End depict the confusion and despair attendant on a long undisturbed English aristocracy upon the arrival of the 20th century. Ford wrote dozens of novels as well as essays, poetry, memoir, and literary criticism, and collaborated with Joseph Conrad on two novels, The Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903).

His novel Ladies Whose Bright Eyes (1911, extensively revised in 1935)[1] is, in a sense, the reverse of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Ford's promotion of literature

In 1908, he founded The English Review, in which he published Thomas Hardy, H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, John Galsworthy, and William Butler Yeats and gave debuts to Wyndham Lewis, D.H. Lawrence, and Norman Douglas. In the 1920s, he founded The Transatlantic Review, a journal with great influence on modern literature. Staying with the artistic community in the Latin Quarter of Paris, France, he made friends with James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Jean Rhys, all of whom he would publish (Ford is the model for the character Braddocks in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises). In a later sojourn in the United States, he was involved with Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Katherine Anne Porter, and Robert Lowell, who was then a student. Despite his deep Victorian roots, Ford was always a champion of new literature and literary experimentation.

Ford died in Deauville, France at the age of 66.

Selected works

  • The Shifting of the Fire, as H Ford Hueffer, Unwin, 1892.
  • The Brown Owl, as H Ford Hueffer, Unwin, 1892.
  • The Cinque Ports, Blackwood, 1900.
  • The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story, Joseph Conrad and Ford M. Hueffer, Heinemann, 1901.
  • Rossetti, Duckworth, [1902].
  • Romance: A Novel, Joseph Conrad and Ford M. Hueffer, Smith Elder, 1903.
  • The Benefactor, Langham, 1905.
  • The Soul of London, Alston, 1905.
  • The Heart of the Country, Duckworth, 1906.
  • The Fifth Queen, Alston, 1906.
  • Privy Seal, Alston, 1907.
  • An English Girl, Methuen, 1907.
  • The Fifth Queen Crowned, Nash, 1908.
  • Mr Apollo, Methuen, 1908.
  • The Half Moon, Nash, 1909.
  • A Call, Chatto, 1910.
  • The Portrait, Methuen, 1910.
  • The Critical Attitude, as Ford Madox Hueffer, Duckworth 1911 (extensively revised in 1935).
  • The Simple Life Limited, as Daniel Chaucer, Lane, 1911.
  • Ladies Whose Bright Eyes, Constable, 1911 (extensively revised in 1935).
  • The Panel, Constable, 1912.
  • The New Humpty Dumpty, as Daniel Chaucer, Lane, 1912.
  • Henry James, Secker, 1913.
  • Mr Fleight, Latimer, 1913.
  • The Young Lovell, Chatto, 1913.
  • Between St Dennis and St George, Hodder, 1915.
  • The Good Soldier, Lane, 1915.
  • Zeppelin Nights, with Violet Hunt, Lane, 1915.
  • The Marsden Case, Duckworth, 1923.
  • Women and Men, Paris, 1923.
  • Mr Bosphorous, Duckworth, 1923.
  • The Nature of a Crime, with Joseph Conrad, Duckworth, 1924.
  • Some Do Not..., Duckworth, 1924.
  • No More Parades, Duckworth, 1925.
  • A Man Could Stand Up, Duckworth, 1926.
  • New York is Not America, Duckworth, 1927.
  • New York Essays, Rudge, 1927.
  • New Poems, Rudge, 1927.
  • Last Post, Duckworth, 1928.
  • A Little Less Than Gods, Duckworth, [1928].
  • No Enemy, Macaulay, 1929.
  • The English Novel, Constable, 1930.
  • When the Wicked Man, Cape, 1932.
  • The Rash Act, Cape, 1933.
  • It Was the Nightingale, Lippincott, 1933.
  • Henry for Hugh, Lippincott, 1934.
  • Provence, Unwin, 1935.
  • Ladies Whose Bright Eyes(revised version), 1935
  • Great Trade Route, OUP, 1937.
  • Vive Le Roy, Unwin, 1937.
  • The March of Literature, Dial, 1938.
  • Selected Poems, Randall, 1971.
  • Your Mirror to My Times, Holt, 1971.

References

  1. ^ Richard A. Cassell, "The Two Sorrells of Ford Madox Ford", in Modern Philology, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Nov., 1961), pp. 114-121 [1]

External links


Persondata
NAME Ford, Ford Madox
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hueffer, Ford Madox; Hueffer, Ford Hermann
SHORT DESCRIPTION English novelist, publisher
DATE OF BIRTH December 17, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Merton, Surrey
DATE OF DEATH June 26, 1939
PLACE OF DEATH Deauville, France

This biographical information was gathered from the Ford_Madox_Ford page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project.

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