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’; and Samuel Hynes has called ‘the greatest war novel ever written by an Englishman’. After the war Ford moved to France, beginning Parade’s End on the Riviera, founding the transatlantic review in Paris, taking on Hemingway as a sub-editor, discovering another generation of Modernists such as Jean Rhys and Basil Bunting, and publishing them alongside James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. From the late 1920s he spent more time in his beloved Provence, where he took a house with the painter Janice Biala. The present volume, combining contributions from eighteen British, French and American experts on Ford, and Modernism, has two connected sections. The first, on Ford’s engagement with France and French culture, is introduced by an essay by Ford himself, written in French, about France, and republished and also translated here for the first time; and includes an essay on literary Paris of the 1920s by the leading biographer Hermione Lee. The second, on Ford and Provence, is introduced in an essay by the novelist Julian Barnes, and includes a selection of previously unpublished letters from Janice Biala about her life with Ford in Provence. The volume also contains 16 pages of illustrations, including previously unseen photographs of Ford and Biala, and reproductions of Biala’s paintings and drawings of Provence.

"Provence" may perhaps be described as the crystallisation of the main idea running through the Great Trade Route, which we published a year ago. Of that book Mr A.G. McDonnell wrote in the Observer: "It is an Indictment, a Philipic....I know of no books to compare with this since Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man" But if "The Great Trade Route" was the destructive onslaught on dubious aspects of contemporary civilisation, "Provence" is the celebration of what might have been and what, according to Mr. Ford, may still yet be - contrasted with what is. For in that triangle of sun-baked , wind-swept, austere yet generous land, bounded as to its base by the Mediterranean and as to its sides, by the Rhone and the Alps, Mr Ford sees all the pride of past European splendour, the small healthy core of Europe's ailing present, the only promise for her future. How and why he sees all this his book alone can reveal, with its history, its moralisings, its descriptions vitalised and clarified by art.

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.

Taking account of Ford Madox Ford’s entire literary output, this companion brings together prominent Ford specialists to offer an overview of existing Ford scholarship and to suggest new directions in Ford studies. The Routledge Research Companion to Ford Madox Ford is split into five parts, exploring the scholarly foundations of Ford Madox Ford studies, Ford's literary identity, Ford and place, specific case studies and themes and critical approaches. Within these five parts, the contributors cover areas relevant to Ford’s fiction, nonfiction and poetry, including reception history, life-writing, literary histories, gender and comedy. The Routledge Research Companion to Ford Madox Ford is an invaluable resource for students and scholars in Ford Studies, in modernism, and in the literary world that Ford helped shape in the early years of the twentieth century.

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, issue, or work; and relates aspects of Ford’s writing, 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 was adapted by Tom Stoppard for the acclaimed 2012 BBC/HBO television series, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall. The twelve essays in this volume, Ford Madox Ford’s Cosmopolis, focus directly on the internationalism so important to Ford, and bring out three main ideas. First, his lifelong commitment to an international vision of literature and culture. Second, ‘Cosmopolis’ also refers to Ford’s experiences of the particular cosmopolitan cities he lived in: London, Paris, New York. Third, the idea that his lifelong experience of Paris in particular informed and shaped his writing. Ford’s Cosmopolis is thus not only an ideal city or state open to such cosmopolitan exchange. It is also a mode of writing which invents forms and styles to render the experience of such hybridity, diversity, fluidity, and tolerance. Contributors are: Alexandra Becquet, Helen Chambers, Martina Ciceri, Laurence Davies, Claire Davison, Annalisa Federici, Georges Létissier, Caroline Patey, Andrea Rummel, Max Saunders, Rob Spence, Martin Stannard, George Wickes, Joseph Wiesenfarth.

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, issue, or work; and relates aspects of Ford’s writing, 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 was adapted by Tom Stoppard for the acclaimed 2012 BBC/HBO television series, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall. Parade’s End is the subject of the fifteen essays here, by both established experts and new scholars. The volume includes groundbreaking work on the psycho-geography of the war in Ford’s novels; on how the war intensifies self-consciousness about performance and sensation; and on the other writers and artists Ford drew upon, and argued with, in producing his post-war masterpiece.