Ford Madox Ford And Englishness

The controversial British writer Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) is increasingly recognized as a major presence in early twentieth-century literature. International Ford Madox Ford Studies has been founded to reflect the recent resurgence of interest in him. Each volume is based upon a particular theme or issue; each will relate 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'; and Samuel Hynes has called 'the greatest war novel ever written by an Englishman'. These works, together with his trilogy The Fifth Queen, about Henry VIII and Katharine Howard, are centrally concerned with the idea of Englishness. All these, and other works across Ford's prolific oeuvre, are studied here. Critics of Edwardian and Modernist literature have been increasingly turning to Ford's brilliant 1905 experiment in Impressionism, The Soul of London, as an exemplary text. His trilogy England and the English (of which this forms the first part) provides a central reference-point for this volume, which presents Ford as a key contributor to Edwardian debates about the 'Condition of England'. His complex, ironic attitude to Englishness makes his approach stand out from contemporary anxieties about race and degeneration, and anticipate the recent reconsideration of Englishness in response to post-colonialism, multiculturalism, globalization, devolution, and the expansion and development of the European Community. Ford's apprehension of the major social transformations of his age lets us read him as a precursor to cultural studies. He considered mass culture and its relation to literary traditions decades before writers like George Orwell, the Leavises, or Raymond Williams. The present book initiates a substantial reassessment, to be continued in future volumes in the series, of Ford's responses to these cultural transformations, his contacts with other writers, and his phases of activity as an editor working to transform modern literature. From another point of view, the essays here also develop the project established in earlier volumes, of reappraising Ford's engagement with the city, history, and modernity.

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."

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. This volume marks the seventieth anniversary of Ford's death. Its focus is how his work engages with visual culture. He wrote criticism, biography, and reminiscences about the Pre-Raphaelite artists he'd been brought up amongst - Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and in particular his grandfather Ford Madox Brown. But his art-writing ranges much more widely, from Holbein to Cézanne and Matisse. Ford came to advocate Impressionism in literature. In London before the First World War he got to know avant-garde artists like Wyndham Lewis and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and wrote about modern visual art movements, such as Futurism, Vorticism and Cubism. This work is discussed, not just in terms of what it tells us about art, but for what it reveals about the development of Ford's own practice as a writer, and of his critical ideas. After the War he lived in France with two painters, first the Australian Stella Bowen, then the American Janice Biala, and moved in the Modernist art circles of Picasso, Juan Gris, Gertrude Stein and Brancusi. This volume includes sixteen new essays by critics and art historians on Ford's engagement with the rapidly transforming visual cultures of his era, which break new ground discussing his writing about visual arts, and how it affected his fiction, poetry and criticism. Among numerous illustrations are several portraits of Ford by Janice Biala reproduced for the first time. Also published here for the first time are generous extracts from Biala's marvelous letters from the 1930s about Ford.

In the book "The English Novel," Ford Madox traces the development of the literary genre of the novel from the earliest times to the death of Joseph Conrad. Ford pays a lot of attention to the origin and the laws of development, and the potential of the novel as a genre.

For students and readers new to the work of Ford Madox Ford, this volume provides a comprehensive introduction to one of the most complex, important and fascinating authors. Bringing together leading Ford scholars, the volume places Ford's work in the context of significant literary, artistic and historical events and movements. Individual essays consider Ford's theory of literary Impressionism and the impact of the First World War; illuminate The Good Soldier and Parade's End; engage with topics such as the city, gender, national identity and politics; discuss Ford as an autobiographer, poet, propagandist, sociologist, Edwardian and modernist; and show his importance as founding editor of the groundbreaking English Review and transatlantic review. The volume encourages detailed close reading of Ford's writing and illustrates the importance of engaging with secondary sources.

Welcome to the Essential Novelists book series, were we present to you the best works of remarkable authors. For this book, the literary critic August Nemo has chosen the two most important and meaningful novels of Ford Madox Ford wich are Some Do Not... and The Good Soldier. In his long literary career Ford had fruitful contacts with most of the important writers of the day and is remembered for his generous encouragement of younger writers. Novels selected for this book: - Some Do Not... - The Good Soldier.This is one of many books in the series Essential Novelists. If you liked this book, look for the other titles in the series, we are sure you will like some of the authors.

"England and the English is Ford Madox Ford's three-volume exploration of what it means to be English, here published in a single volume for the first time in the United Kingdom. Starting with the brilliantly impressionistic evocations of the chaotic energy of modern London in the first part, Ford proceeds to delve into the rural past that has always been identified as being at the heart of England, before concluding with an investigation of the formation of the English character. Throughout, Ford is the watchful outsider, perceptive, humorous and affectionate towards the complexities of Englishness. A fascinating introduction to the style and preoccupations of this seminal Modernist writer, England and the English has particular resonance for our own times when the sense of national identity is again under scrutiny." "This edition includes Ford's preface to the one-volume American edition. Sara Haslam's introduction sets the trilogy in its contemporary context and outlines its significance in Ford's work."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

A stark, modernist look at the realities of contemporary war. The four novels that makes up Parade’s End (Some Do Not..., No More Parades, A Man Who Could Stand Up—, and Last Post) tell the story of Christopher Tietjens, a British government statistician who joins the army during the first world war. He suffers severe shell-shock, and must live through an unhappy marriage while suspicions run rampant that he has been having an affair. The novels have been referred to as classics of 20th century modernist literature, and Ford has been praised for his unwillingness to ascribe some sort of purpose or order to the violence of war. HBO, VRT, and BBC collaborated on a miniseries adaptation of the novels starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall, and written by Tom Stoppard. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.