Ford Madox Ford

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I couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. No man can, or, if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him.

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal: the very best and the very worst.

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself.

No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the country... nor for the world, I dare say... None... Gone.

Pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. But if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go.

One of his most famous works is The Good Soldier

The Good Soldier

The Good Soldier is a 1915 novel by England novelist Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two seemingly perfect couples....
 (1915), a novel set just before World War I

World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
 which chronicles the tragic

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
 lives of two "perfect couples" using intricate flashbacks. In a "Dedicatory Letter to Stella Ford” that prefaces the novel, Ford reports that a friend pronounced The Good Soldier “the finest French novel

French literature

French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak other traditional languages of France....
 in the English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
!”

Ford was involved in the British war propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is the dissemination of information aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people. As opposed to Objectivity providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience....
 after the outbreak of World War I. He worked for the War Propaganda Bureau managed by C. F. G. Masterman with other writers and scholars who were popular in those years, such as Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett

Enoch Arnold Bennett was an England novelist....
, G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction....
, John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy Order of Merit was an England novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter....
, Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre Ren? Belloc was a France-born writer and historian who became a naturalised United Kingdom subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century....
 and Gilbert Murray

Gilbert Murray

George Gilbert Aim? Murray was a United Kingdom classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century....
. Ford wrote two propaganda books for Masterman, namely When Blood is Their Argument: An Analysis of Prussian Culture (1915), with the help of Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington, born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an England writer and poetry.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry....
, and Between St. Dennis and St. George: A Sketch of Three Civilizations (1915).

After writing the two propaganda books, Ford enlisted in the Welsh Regiment on 30 July 1915, and was sent to France, thus ending his cooperation with the War Propaganda Bureau. His combat experiences and his previous propaganda activities inspired his tetralogy

Tetralogy

A tetralogy is a compound work that is made up of four distinct works. Compare to a trilogy; made up of three works.The name comes from the Attica theater, where tetralogies were meant to be played in one sitting at the Dionysia....
 Parade's End

Parade's End

Parade's End is a tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928. It is set in England and on the Western Front in World War I, where Ford served as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, a life vividly depicted in the novels....
 (1924-1928), set in England

England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
 and on the Western Front

Western Front

Western Front was a term used during the World War I and World War II world war to describe the "contested armed frontier" between lands controlled by Germany to the East and the Allies to the West....
 before, during and after World War I.

Ford also wrote dozens of novels as well as essay

Essay

An essay is usually a short piece of writing. It is often written from an author's personal Perspective . Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author....
s, poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
, memoir

Memoir

As a literature genre, a memoir , or a reminiscence, forms a subclass of autobiography ? although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are today almost interchangeable....
 and literary criticism

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals....
, and collaborated with Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish novelist, writing in English. Many critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, despite his not having learned to speak English fluently until he was in his twenties ....
 on two novels, The Inheritors (1901) and Romance

Romance (novel)

Romance is a novel co-authored by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. It was the second of their three collaborations. Romance was eventually published by George Bell and Sons in London and by McClure, Phillips in New York, in March 1904....
 (1903).

His novel Ladies Whose Bright Eyes

Ladies Whose Bright Eyes

Ladies Whose Bright Eyes is a novel by Ford Madox Ford. It was written in 1911 and extensively revised in 1935 and published under Ford's common pseudonym Daniel Chaucer....
 (1911, extensively revised in 1935) is, in a sense, the reverse of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 in literature novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The work is a very early example of time travel in literature, anticipating by six years H....
.

In 1908, he founded The English Review, in which he published Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, Order of Merit was an England author of the naturalism movement, though he regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain....
, H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells

Herbert George Wells , known by his pen name H. G. Wells, was an England author, best known for his work in the science fiction genre. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction"....
, Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish novelist, writing in English. Many critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, despite his not having learned to speak English fluently until he was in his twenties ....
, Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, Order of Merit , son of theologian Henry James Sr., brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James, was an United States author....
, John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy Order of Merit was an England novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter....
 and William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

File:William Butler Yeat by George Charles Beresford.jpgWilliam Butler Yeats was an Irish people poet and dramatist and one of the foremost figures of 20th century in literature....
, and gave debuts to Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Lewis

Percy Wyndham Lewis was an England Painting and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST ....
, D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an England author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary criticism. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization....
 and Norman Douglas

Norman Douglas

George Norman Douglas was a British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel South Wind ....
. In the 1920s, he founded The Transatlantic Review, a journal with great influence on modern literature

Modern literature

Modern literature can either refer to*modernist literature *History of modern literature .See also*Contemporary literature...
. Staying with the artistic community in the Latin Quarter of Paris, France, he made friends with James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Ireland expatriate author of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ....
, Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short story author, and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, France, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as "the Lost Generation"....
, Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and Modernist literature....
, Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an United States expatriate poetry, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist poetry movement in the first half of the 20th century....
 and Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys , born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a mid 20th century Dominican novelist. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, written as a "prequel" to Charlotte Bront?'s Jane Eyre....
, all of whom he would publish (Ford is the model for the character Braddocks in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises is the first major novel by Ernest Hemingway. Published in 1926 in literature, the Plot centers on a group of expatriate United States in Europe during the 1920s....
). In a later sojourn in the United States, he was involved with Allen Tate

Allen Tate

John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944....
, Caroline Gordon

Caroline Gordon

Caroline Ferguson Gordon was a notable United States novelist and literary critic who, while still in her thirties, was the recipient of two prestigious literary awards, a 1932 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 1934 O....
, Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter was a Pulitzer Prize-winning United States journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. She is known for her penetrating insight; her works deal with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil....
 and Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell

Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946....
 (who was then a student). Despite his deep Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian Era of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the period of Victoria of the United Kingdom reign from June 1837 to January 1901....
 roots, Ford was always a champion of new literature and literary experimentation. He had an affair with Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys , born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a mid 20th century Dominican novelist. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, written as a "prequel" to Charlotte Bront?'s Jane Eyre....
, which ended bitterly.

Ford spent the last years of his life teaching at Olivet College

Olivet College

Olivet College is a coeducational, Christian, liberal arts college located in Olivet, Michigan, Michigan, 30 miles south of Lansing and 125 miles west of Detroit....
 in Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a Midwestern United States U.S. state of the United States of America. It was named after Lake Michigan, whose name is a French adaptation of the Anishinaabe language term mishigama, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, and died in Deauville

Deauville

Deauville is a Communes of the Calvados d?partement in the Calvados d?partements of France in the Basse-Normandie r?gions of France of France....
, France

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
, at the age of 65.

• Ford went through several name changes. He was baptized
  Baptism
  
  In Christianity, baptism is the ritual act, with the use of water, by which one is admitted as a full member of the Christian Church and, in the view of some, as a member of the particular Church in which the baptism is administered....
   Ford Hermann Hueffer, but later adopted his mother's name of Madox. Later he claimed he was Baron Hueffer von Aschendorf, but, after World War I, wanting to disavow his German background, he finally settled on Ford Madox Ford.

• The Shifting of the Fire, as H Ford Hueffer, Unwin, 1892.
• The Brown Owl, as H Ford Hueffer, Unwin, 1892.
• The Cinque Ports, Blackwood, 1900.
• The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story, Joseph Conrad
  Joseph Conrad
  
  Joseph Conrad was a Polish novelist, writing in English. Many critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, despite his not having learned to speak English fluently until he was in his twenties ....
   and Ford M. Hueffer, Heinemann, 1901.
• Rossetti, Duckworth, [1902].
• Romance
  Romance (novel)
  
  Romance is a novel co-authored by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. It was the second of their three collaborations. Romance was eventually published by George Bell and Sons in London and by McClure, Phillips in New York, in March 1904....
  , Joseph Conrad
  Joseph Conrad
  
  Joseph Conrad was a Polish novelist, writing in English. Many critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, despite his not having learned to speak English fluently until he was in his twenties ....
   and Ford M. Hueffer, Smith Elder, 1903.
• The Benefactor, Langham, 1905.
• The Soul of London, Alston, 1905.
• The Heart of the Country, Duckworth, 1906.
• The Fifth Queen, Alston, 1906.
• Privy Seal, Alston, 1907.
• An English Girl, Methuen, 1907.
• The Fifth Queen Crowned, Nash, 1908.
• Mr Apollo, Methuen, 1908.
• The Half Moon, Nash, 1909.
• A Call, Chatto, 1910.
• The Portrait, Methuen, 1910.
• The Critical Attitude, as Ford Madox Hueffer, Duckworth 1911 (extensively revised in 1935).
• The Simple Life Limited, as Daniel Chaucer, Lane, 1911.
• Ladies Whose Bright Eyes
  Ladies Whose Bright Eyes
  
  Ladies Whose Bright Eyes is a novel by Ford Madox Ford. It was written in 1911 and extensively revised in 1935 and published under Ford's common pseudonym Daniel Chaucer....
  , Constable, 1911 (extensively revised in 1935).
• The Panel, Constable, 1912.
• The New Humpty Dumpty, as Daniel Chaucer, Lane, 1912.
• Henry James, Secker, 1913.
• Mr Fleight, Latimer, 1913.
• The Young Lovell, Chatto, 1913.
• Between St Dennis and St George, Hodder, 1915.
• The Good Soldier
  The Good Soldier
  
  The Good Soldier is a 1915 novel by England novelist Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two seemingly perfect couples....
  , Lane, 1915.
• Zeppelin Nights, with Violet Hunt
  Violet Hunt
  
  Isobel Violet Hunt was a British writer, now best known for her supernatural fiction. Her father was the artist Alfred William Hunt, her mother the novelist Margaret Raine Hunt....
  , Lane, 1915.
• The Marsden Case, Duckworth, 1923.
• Women and Men, Paris, 1923.
• Mr Bosphorous, Duckworth, 1923.
• The Nature of a Crime, with Joseph Conrad
  Joseph Conrad
  
  Joseph Conrad was a Polish novelist, writing in English. Many critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, despite his not having learned to speak English fluently until he was in his twenties ....
  , Duckworth, 1924.
• Some Do Not...
  Parade's End
  
  Parade's End is a tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928. It is set in England and on the Western Front in World War I, where Ford served as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, a life vividly depicted in the novels....
  , Duckworth, 1924.
• No More Parades
  Parade's End
  
  Parade's End is a tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928. It is set in England and on the Western Front in World War I, where Ford served as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, a life vividly depicted in the novels....
  , Duckworth, 1925.
• A Man Could Stand Up
  Parade's End
  
  Parade's End is a tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928. It is set in England and on the Western Front in World War I, where Ford served as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, a life vividly depicted in the novels....
  , Duckworth, 1926.
• New York is Not America, Duckworth, 1927.
• New York Essays, Rudge, 1927.
• New Poems, Rudge, 1927.
• Last Post
  Parade's End
  
  Parade's End is a tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928. It is set in England and on the Western Front in World War I, where Ford served as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, a life vividly depicted in the novels....
  , Duckworth, 1928.
• A Little Less Than Gods, Duckworth, [1928].
• No Enemy, Macaulay, 1929.
• The English Novel, Constable, 1930.
• When the Wicked Man, Cape, 1932.
• The Rash Act, Cape, 1933.
• It Was the Nightingale, Lippincott, 1933.
• Henry for Hugh, Lippincott, 1934.
• Provence, Unwin, 1935.
• Ladies Whose Bright Eyes(revised version), 1935
• Great Trade Route, OUP, 1937.
• Vive Le Roy, Unwin, 1937.
• The March of Literature, Dial, 1938.
• Selected Poems, Randall, 1971.
• Your Mirror to My Times, Holt, 1971.

• Members of the Ford Madox Ford Society get a free copy of new books published in the International Ford Madox Ford Studies series; see the Society website for details.