Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Ford Madox Ford, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 4122 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description
This 900-page survey of world literature, "From Confucius'Day to Our Own," was the last book written by Ford Madox Ford, one of theseminal figures of the modernist period. Written for general readersrather than scholars and first published in 1938, The March of Literatureis a working novelist's view of what is valuable in literature, and why.Convinced that scholars and teachers give a false sense of literature,Ford brings alive the pleasures of reading by writing about books he ispassionate about.

Beginning at the beginningwith ancient Egyptian and Chinese literatureand the BibleFord works his way through classical literature, thewritings of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, continuing up to the majorwriters of his own day like Ezra Pound, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad.

With his encyclopedic reading and expertise in the techniques of writing,Ford is a reliable and entertaining guide. Ford also includes a chapteron publishers and booksellers, noting the key roles they play inliterature's existence.

Novelist Alexander Theroux has written an insightful introduction forthis reissue, the first time this monumental book has been made availablein paperback. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Ford Madox Ford's greatest book, The Good Soldier, is considered a masterpiece for its use of an unreliable narrator who describes the tangled life of two couples. It seems Ford, born Ford Hermann Hueffer, exhibited traits of unreliability himself. As Max Saunders describes it, Ford often was "dishonest in matters of large change." In this scholarly, 632-page work, Saunders doesn't so much attempt to set the record straight on Ford as he does to defend the writer's actions as central to his life and his style. "In all of Ford's writing, make-believe is inseparable from reminiscence," Saunders writes.Book Description
The second volume of Max Saunders's magisterial biography of Ford Madox Ford takes up the story from Ford's enlistment in the army and departure for France in 1916. Like its predecessor, The After-War World makes full use of previously unpublished and long-lost material. It is the first biography to establish Ford's importance to modern literature: exploring the relations between a writer's life, autobiography, and fiction, and showing how Ford's case challenges the conventions of literary biography itself. Saunders provides a ground-breaking reading of Ford's post-war masterpiece, Parade's End, and describes the founding of the transatlantic review, the influential literary journal that published Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Picasso, and many more major writers and artists.Ford's personal relationships were no less complex than his work: while living with Stella Bowen after the breakup of his partnership with Violet Hunt he had a brief affair with Jean Rhys, but he was to spend his final years until his death in 1939, with the Polish American painter Janice Biala.Throughout his career Ford endlessly reinvented himself, and this biography, for the first time, offers a sustained and critical account of his dazzling literary transformations. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
Evoking the glamour and frivolity of its high society life'sgrowth over the centuries into a bewildering mass of possibilities, andthe hardship of its working people, Soul of London (1905) displays analluring humanity. Part history, part personal reminiscence and partprose poem, Ford's prophetic image of the evolution of modernityprefigures the social alienation that would transform twentieth centuryliterature. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Ford Madox Ford
I was amazed to learn that Ford Madox Ford published 81 books during his lifetime; other than "The Good Soldier" and the "Parade's End" tetralogy, and maybe "The Fifth Queen," nothing else seems to survive outside of deeply stocked libraries. He over-wrote but had little choice: what he wrote didn't sell very well so he had to keep churning out more to make ends meet. He wrote every day his whole life. He was a great help to young writers, most of whom treated him badly (Hemingway was probably the worst offender). Ford was not combative, but rather ironic: "following one of the occasions when he was attacked in print, he responded by protesting that he had never done anything to help his attacker, had never given him money, had not arranged for his first book to be published - so why was he thus attacked?" That was Ford, and it's a good anecdote told by Alan Judd, who is quite a good writer himself and relates this life of Ford in a relaxed, casual manner. He has high regards for his subject and though he doesn't whitewash Ford's faults, he finds much room for forgiveness and understanding. Some thought Ford the most underrated novelist of the century; though it might be hard to concur with that view, "The Good Soldier" will certainly last the test of time. Those interested in Ford should find much to admire about this biography.

a literary giant
Ford Madox Ford (born Ford Hermann Hueffer) had the good fortune to have as his biographer the English novelist Alan Judd. The tetralogy "Parades End" which marks the end of the gentleman officer class and Edwardian England had its origins in Ford's experiences after his arrival at the Battle of the Somme (1916) with the 9th Welch regiment. Ford's commanding officer,Colonel Cooke, disliked Ford's age (too old), his special reserve officer status, and his literary reputation. Colonel Cooke wrote to brigade headquarters that Ford was "quite unsuitable to perform the duties required of an officer in this campaign" Ford was soon hospitalized with lung problems and sent home to England for medical treatment. He failed in his attempt to return to duty in France and was assigned light duties as a captain in the 23rd King's Liverpool Regiment. He was discharged in 1919 under category 19-"authors,gipsies, travelling showmen, unemployables">(page 308).Judd'ssympathetic biography brings to life a writer described by Richard Locke in the Wall Street Journal as a "perennially neglected and rediscovered literary" giant.Locke said that Ford "ended up out of fashion and out of cash". He was the writer in residence at Olivet College, Michigan.Ford will be remembered as a major novelist who generously helped many British and American writers.In 1939 Ford and his long time American companion Janice Biala traveled to France where he died. ... Read more