The first volume of a major new critical biography Ford Madox Ford wrote some of the best English prose of the twentieth century, mastering and metamorphosing all its major forms: the novel, literary criticism, travel writing, even historical and cultural discourse. He was also an innovative and influential poet, as well as the century's greatest literary editor. He collaborated with Joseph Conrad, and advised Ezra Pound; his admirers include novelists as diverse as Sinclair Lewis, Jean Rhys, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess and Gore Vidal. This first volume of a two-volume life takes Ford from his birth as Ford Hermann Hueffer in 1873 to the eve of his departure for France, and war, in 1916. It charts his growth and development as a writer of great complexity, first with the trilogy The Fifth Queen and culminating in his masterpiece The Good Soldier. It also examines his turbulent emotional life, from his elopement and marriage to Elsie Martindale in 1894 to his affair with Violet Hunt in the same year that he founded The English Review. Ford said that a writer's life is 'a dual affair', a life enshrined in the writing and Max Saunders's aim is to examine the interconnections between the private and the public life, and the inner life that drove him. The discovery of new manuscripts, and of letters unavailable to previous biographers ensure that this is the most important and exhaustive critical biography of Ford to appear in the last twenty years.

About the Author
Max Saunders is Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Institute and Professor of English and Co-Director at the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King's College London

Reviews
Review from previous edition Review from previous edition Max Saunders knows more about Ford Madox Ford than any other living person. He also understands him better than anyone else. His scrupulous and passionate biography will never be superseded. * Julian Barnes *
magisterial biography ... It is a work of exemplary erudition, critical intelligence and sympathy. * Times Literary Supplement *
This is an outstanding Life and a major contribution to literary scholarship. This biography releases him from the casualty clearing stations in which he has been detained for so long and restores him to active literary service. * Ian McIntyre, The Times *
Saunders has produced a fine critical life which will be invaluable for all students of Ford's work and influence ... he has done a magnificent service to his subject in his thoughtful analysis of Ford's great tetralogy, Parade's End ... Saunders has produced a valuable academic work. Thoughtful, lucid and scrupulously objective, he restores Ford to us as a brilliant, much-maligned man - and a major literary figure. * Miranda Seymour, The Independent *
Saunders has made a remarkable tribute to his subject, and his subject is irresistible. * Adrian Wright, The Literary Review *
it is admirable that OUP decided to give Saunders a full-sized canvas to work on ... he makes excellent use of it ... This is the account to which all students of Ford will turn first. A main attraction of this majestically complete, balanced and well-written biography is the lavish quotation. This is a life which makes one want to go back to read, and re-read, Ford's works. * John Sutherland, The Sunday Times *
definitive and ample biography ... Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life is both meticulous to a fault and bright with insight * The Times Higher Education Supplement *
Saunders's book is a serious and valuable interpretation which enables us to look at Ford's dual life with much greater complexity. * The Guardian *
No admirer of Ford Madox Ford will want to miss Max Saunders's two-volume ... about this extraordinary and complicated man. Saunders triumphantly establishes him as one of the most generous and influential figures of his time. * Miranda Seymour, The Sunday Times *
persuasive and immensely authoritative account of a man who has, for far too long, been overshadowed by his bitchy and thankless proteges * Miranda Seymour, The Independent *
Mr Saunders meets the challenge through his remorseless scholarship. In a sense, his two volumes are a lesson in anatomy, with the literary surgeon taking justifiable pride in his skill with the scalpel and delighting in the exposure of that particular sinew, that particular nerve ... no one wishing to understand Ford dare ignore his probings. * The Economist *
The second, concluding volume of Max Saunders's magisterial biography of Ford Madox Ford amply fulfils the promise of the first. Max Saunders probably knows as much as can be known about Ford and his writing, and he reproduces it here with an intelligence, integrity and consideration for the reader that his subject - above all - would have appreciated. This must surely become the source-book for all future Fordians. * Alan Judd, The Daily Telegraph *
The deep focus of Max Saunder's Ford Madox Ford, now completed by a second volume ... means that any other prospective Ford biographers out there can shut up shop. * Julian Barnes, The Sunday Times *
his studies are as fresh as they are minute ... this is a celebration that could go on indefinitely, always intelligent, always considerate, always affectionate * London Review of Books *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199668342
Author Max Saunders
Format Paperback
Page Count 688
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 175mm * 37mm