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Ford Madox Ford
Biography
Ford Madox Ford was born Ford Hermann Hueffer in 1873 in Merton, Surrey. He later changed his name to Ford Madox Hueffer and, finally, Ford Madox Ford, in honour of his maternal grandfather, the painter Ford Madox Brown. Because of his grandfather, he spent a lot of his childhood with various figures of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His father, Francis Hueffer, was of German origin and was the music critic of The Times. He travelled throughout Europe when young and became a keen supporter of French art and literature. He worked with Joseph Conrad on two novels and was a clear influence on Conrad (though they had falling-out later on). He also influenced some of the early imagist poets, including Ezra Pound . He was an early supporter of D. H. Lawrence.
His personal life was somewhat messy. He eloped with and then married Elsie Martindale. The marriage was a failure but they never divorced. Ford had a series of affairs, including with his wife’s sister, with Jean Rhys, with the writer Violet Hunt and, towards the end of his life, the American artist Janice Biala.
His work was neglected for some time but he is now recognised as a key modernist. The Good Soldier is considered his best work but, in my view, Parade’s End is one of the key novels of the twentieth century and, along with Die Schlafwandler (The Sleepwalkers) rates as the key novel showing how the world changed after World War 1.
Books about Ford Madox Ford
Richard A. Cassell: Ford Madox Ford
Charles G.Hoffmann: Ford Madox Ford
Alan Judd: Ford Madox Ford
F. MacShane: The Life and Work of Ford Madox Ford
Arthur Mizener: The Saddest Story, A Biography of Ford Madox Ford (the standard biography)
Max Saunders: Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life
Other Links
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Prose & Poetry – Ford Madox Ford
The Ford Madox Ford Society
Texts
Bibliography
1891 The Brown Owl
1892 The Feather
1892 The Shifting of the Fire (with Joseph Conrad)
1893 The Questions at the Well
1894 The Queen Who Flew
1896 Ford Madox Brown – a Record of his Life and Work
1900 The Cinque Ports
1900 Poems for Pictures and Notes for Music
1901 The Inheritors
1902 Rossetti
1903 Romance (with Joseph Conrad)
1904 The Face of Night
1905 The Benefactor
1905 The Soul of London
1905 Hans Holbein
1906 The Heart of the Country
1906 Christina’s Fairy Book
1906 The Fifth Queen and How She Came to Court
1907 England and the English : an Interpretation
1907 Privy Seal
1907 From Inland
1907 An English Girl
1907 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
1907 The Spirit of the People: an Analysis of the English Mind
1908 The Fifth Queen Crowned
1908 Mr. Apollo
1909 The”Half Moon,”
1910 Songs from London
1910 A Call
1910 The Portrait
1911 High Germany
1911 Ladies Whose Bright Eyes
1911 The Simple Life Limited (as Daniel Chaucer)
1911 The Critical Attitude
1911 Ancient Lights and Certain New Reflections
1912 The New Humpty-Dumpty (as Daniel Chaucer)
1912 The Panel (revised as Ring for Nancy)
1912 This Monstrous Regiment of Women
1913 Collected Poems
1913 Henry James
1913 The Desirable Alien (with V Hunt)
1913 The Young Lovell
1914 Mr. Fleight
1914 Antwerp
1915 Between St. Dennis and St. George
1915 When Blood is their Argument: an Analysis of Prussian Culture
1915 The Good Soldier
1916 Zeppelin Nights (with Violet Hunt)
1918 On Heaven, Poems Written on Active Service
1921 A House
1921 Thus to Revisit
1923 Mister Bosphorus and the Muses
1923 The Nature of Crime (with J. Conrad)
1923 The Marsden Case
1923 Women and Men
1924 Some Do Not
1924 Joseph Conrad: a Personal Remembrance
1924 A Mirror to France
1925 No More Parades
1926 A Man Could Stand Up
1927 New Poems
1927 New York Essays
1927 New York Is Not America
1928 Last Post
1928 A Little Less Than Gods
1929 No Enemy
1929 The English Novel
1931 When the Wicked Man
1931 Return to Yesterday
1933 The Rash Act
1934 It Was the Nightingale
1934 Henry for Hugh
1935 Provence
1936 Vive le Roy
1937 Mightier Than the Sword
1937 The Great Trade Route
1938 The March of Literature
1964 Critical Writings
1965 Letters
1966 Buckshee
1971 Your Mirror to My Times (later: Memories and Impressions)
1982 Pound / Ford
1986 The Ford Madox Ford Reader
1988 A History of Our Own Time
1993 The Correspondence of Ford Madox Ford and Stella Bowen
2003 Selected Poems