Ford Madox Ford Papers (MSS046), 1914-1939 | MSS Manuscripts

Ford Madox Ford is one of the most important, but overlooked, literary figures of the early 20th centuruy. He was a poet and novelist who wrote more than 60 books, but he is remembered as much for his literary associations as for his own writings.

He was born Ford Madox Hueffer in Marton, England into a family of German artists and writers and began his writing career at an early age. Ford befriended Joseph Conrad and the two collaborated on three novels, The Inheritor (1903), Romance (1903), and The Nature of Crime (1924). His own early works were well-received and critics predicted a promising career for Ford. He founded The English Review in 1908 and published Conrad, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, H. G. Wells, T. S. Elliot, and others. After serving in Wolrd War I, Ford settled in Paris. There he founded The Transatlantic Review and introduced the work of James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Other authors of note with whom Ford was associated as editor or friend include Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, and Gertrude Stein. He spent his later years in the United States and in France where he died in 1939.

While he is remembered most often for his friendships with Pound, Conrad, Joyce, and others, Ford was also a major force in the development of the modern English novel. He was especially adept at new techniques involving narration and the shifting of time within his works. These innovative approaches to writing are best seen in his most famous novels, The Good Soldier (1915) and a quartet of novels written between 1924 and 1928 which were gathered into one volume, Parades End (1950). Ford was a distinguished critic and wrote numerous essays, reviews, and monographs about contemporary art and literature.