Book Description

The controversial British writer Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) is increasingly recognized as a major presence in early twentieth-century literature. This series of International Ford Madox Ford Studies was founded to reflect the recent resurgence of interest in him. Each volume is based upon a particular theme or issue; and relates aspects of Ford’s work, life, and contacts, to broader concerns of his time. Ford is best-known for his fiction, especially The Good Soldier, long considered a modernist masterpiece; and Parade’s End, which Anthony Burgess described as ‘the finest novel about the First World War’, Samuel Hynes has called ‘the greatest war novel ever written by an Englishman’, and which has been adapted by Tom Stoppard for the BBC and HBO. Ford’s America, like the other places he wrote about extensively such as England or France, is a place of the imagination as much as the real place in which he lived and travelled. This volume is the first extended treatment of Ford’s lifelong contacts with American literature and culture. It combines contributions from British and American experts on Ford and Modernism. It has five closely inter-connected sections which display, between them, the range of Ford’s creative relationships with American writers and American territory. The first explores the transatlantic dimension of Ford’s modernism, from his involvement with Americans like James and Pound in Britain before the war, through the Paris days among the Americans in the transatlantic review circle such as Hemingway and Stein, to his time in America in the 20s and 30s, and the American care for his reputation after his death. The second section focuses on New York, and the publishing world portrayed in Ford’s only novel set mainly in the US, When the Wicked Man. A third section, discussing culture, politics, and journalism in his writing of the 1930s, is followed by two examples of his commentary on contemporary American culture, both published here for the first time. The final section juxtaposes two examples of the many American writers who have paid tribute to Ford: an essay tracking Robert Lowell’s regular recollections of his encounters with him; and Mary Gordon’s celebration of his life with the Polish-American painter Janice Biala. The volume also contains fourteen illustrations, including artwork by Biala and photographs of Ford.