Ford, Ford Madox, 1873-1939

Dates

• Existence: 1873 - 1939

Biography

Ford Madox Ford was born Ford Hermann Hueffer on December 17, 1873, in Surrey, England. He was brought up in London. At the turn of the century he lived on the Romney Marsh, befriending Henry James and Stephen Crane, and beginning a ten-year collaboration with Joseph Conrad. In the years before the First World War he moved to London, where he founded the English Review, bringing together many of the best established writers of the day – James, Thomas Hardy, Conrad, H. G. Wells, and Arnold Bennett – with his new discoveries, many of whom would help redefine modern literature, such as Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and D. H. Lawrence. His major work of the Edwardian period includes the Fifth Queen trilogy of historical novels about Henry VIII and Katharine Howard (1906-08); the trilogy of impressionist books about England and the English (1905-07) and the novels A Call (1910) and – Ford’s best-known and most highly-regarded novel – The Good Soldier (1915). During the war he wrote propaganda; but in 1915 enlisted, serving in France in 1916-17 during the Battle of the Somme and at the Ypres Salient. He was invalided back to Britain in 1917, remaining in the army and giving lectures. After a spell recuperating in the Sussex countryside after the war, Ford lived mostly in France during the 1920s, first in Provence, then in Paris. He published his other major fictional work, the series of four novels known as Parade’s End, between 1924 and 1928. These were particularly well-received in America, where Ford spent much of his time from the later 1920s to his death in 1939. (from Ford Madox Ford Society biography)

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