The Good Soldier


Book Description

The Good Soldier A Tale of Passion by Ford Madox Ford At the fashionable German spa town Bad Nauheim, two wealthy, fin de siecle couples - one British, the other American - meet for their yearly assignation. As their story moves back and forth in time between 1902 and 1914, the fragile surface propriety of the pre - World War I society in which these four characters live is ruptured - revealing deceit, hatred, infidelity, and betrayal. "The Good Soldier" is Edward Ashburnham, who, as an adherent to the moral code of the English upper class, is nonetheless consumed by a passion for women younger than his wife - a stoic but fallible figure in what his American friend, John Dowell, calls "the saddest story I ever heard."




Parade's End


Book Description

This monumental novel, divided into four separate books, celebrates the end of an era, the irrevocable destruction of the comfortable, predictable society that vanished during World War I.




Some Do Not


Book Description

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.




Ford Madox Ford


Book Description




The Last Post


Book Description

Following WWI, an English aristocrat struggles to find peace as he attempts to rebuild his life in this conclusion to the Parade’s End Tetralogy. The Great War is over. The ancestral home of Christopher Tietjens has been sold to an American. Christopher and Valentine Wannop now share a cottage with his brother and sister-in-law. A mathematician before the war, Christopher now earns a living selling antique furniture. It seems his world will be forever changed . . . Set over the course of one summer day, The Last Post follows its characters as they amble through a disorientating new world. Tensions arise for the inhabitants of the cottage. Valentine is pregnant and worried about her unmarried status as well as Christopher’s money troubles. Then Christopher’s estranged wife schemes to make their lives miserable. With the past haunting their present, the future seems uncertain for Christopher and Valentine. Praise for Parade’s End “The finest English novel about the Great War.” —Malcolm Bradbury “There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade’s End is one of them.” —W. H. Auden “The best novel by a British writer. . . . It is also the finest novel about the First World War. It is also the finest novel about the nature of British society.” —Anthony Burgess “The English prose masterpiece of the time.” —William Carlos Williams




The Routledge Research Companion to Ford Madox Ford


Book Description

Taking account of Ford Madox Ford’s entire literary output, this companion brings together prominent Ford specialists to offer an overview of existing Ford scholarship and to suggest new directions in Ford studies. The Routledge Research Companion to Ford Madox Ford is split into five parts, exploring the scholarly foundations of Ford Madox Ford studies, Ford's literary identity, Ford and place, specific case studies and themes and critical approaches. Within these five parts, the contributors cover areas relevant to Ford’s fiction, nonfiction and poetry, including reception history, life-writing, literary histories, gender and comedy. The Routledge Research Companion to Ford Madox Ford is an invaluable resource for students and scholars in Ford Studies, in modernism, and in the literary world that Ford helped shape in the early years of the twentieth century.




The 100 Best Novels in English


Book Description

LITERARY COMPANIONS, BOOK REVIEWS & GUIDES. Everybody loves a list but this is a list of major ambition: namely, to select the best 100 novels in the English language, published from the late 17th century to the present day. This list has been built up week by week in The Observer since September 2013, and selected by writer and Observer editor Robert McCrum. With a short critique on each book, this is a real delight for literary lovers.




The Alien Protagonist of Ford Madox Ford


Book Description

This book focuses on a single central problem: the frequently noted similarity between Ford's protagonists, men whose peculiarly alien temperaments and ethics lead them into inevitable conflict with their particular milieu. The main argument of the study is that behind these struggles, traced out through four successive centuries, lies a previously unnoted pattern. Originally published in 1970. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.




The Rash Act


Book Description

When Henry Martin, `the typical man of the period' (the Great Depression)attempts suicide, he finds himself a new identity as the casual Hugh Monckton he would like to have been.




No More Parades


Book Description

No More Parades is the second novel in Ford Madox Ford's series of four novels depicting the meeting, courtship, and ultimate fulfillment of two modern heroes, Christopher Tietjens and Valentine Wannop, despite social condemnation, personal travails, and World War I. Ford poured his own experiences as writer, lover, and soldier into these novels. No More Parades finds Christopher with the army in France. His efforts are going unrewarded, his wife is raising a scandal about him, and his love for Valentine Wannop has been buried deep beneath layers of responsibility. At the novel's climax, he must undergo extended interrogation to avoid a court-martial on charges of striking a superior officer, and that same morning his command is to be subjected to a formal inspection. Through Ford's eyes we see war and romance as wrapped in an irrational embrace