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The Ford Madox Ford Society

Welcome

This international society was founded in 1997 to promote knowledge of and interest in the life and works of Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939).

Become A Member

Welcome to the official website of the Ford Madox Ford Society

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The author of nearly 80 books and the founding editor of two groundbreaking periodicals, the English Review (1908-10) and the transatlantic review (1924), Ford is best known as the writer of The Good Soldier (1915), and the Parade’s End tetralogy (1924-8). He was also a well-regarded poet, memoirist, critic and cultural impressionist, including among his works a ‘personal remembrance’ of Joseph Conrad and a number of books about his ‘Pre-Raphaelite childhood’.

This site has been designed to provide information about the Society’s activities, about Ford’s life and work, and about the published work and scholarship available on Ford. 

If you are an admirer, an enthusiast, a reader, a scholar, or a student of anything Fordian, then this society would like to hear from you, and welcomes your participation in its activities.

Seamus O'Malley
Society Chair

Read Seamus O'Malley's full welcome here

Farewell from outgoing Chair, Sara Haslam

 On Friday 29 January, the Society Executive Committee met virtually for an event to mark the end of my term of office as Chair. I took over from our illustrious founding Chair, Max Saunders, in 2008. This was the year our 14th Newsletter was published, of which more below. It was also just after a highpoint in our conference history: Genova in September 2007, where we were joined by an amazing duo of plenary speakers A. S. Byatt and Colm Toíbín.

It is, therefore, more than time that I step down in favour of new leadership. As I do so I wanted to record what a privilege and pleasure it has been to serve in the role, to meet and talk with those members who have made it to conferences or other events over the years, and to do what I can to promote knowledge and appreciation of this great writer. There are exciting times ahead, I know, and more to follow on those. Read More...


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Elsie Martindale Hueffer: Photo courtesy of: Ford Madox Ford Collection #4605 Division of Rare Books and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University

From the Last Post blog

​News from the Lamb family archives: Elsie speaks
By Sara Haslam

August 1893: The Questions at the Well by Fenil Haig [the first of many pseudonyms Ford used] was published by Digby, Long & Co., dedicated to Miss Elsie Martindale.

Aside from the number of Elsie Martindale’s typed and handwritten story manuscripts, and the books of Ford’s that remained together in her possession, the most striking thing to this Ford scholar invited to explore the papers held by her descendants in Dublin were her diaries.

‘April 9th 95 F. is working again at the Life [of Madox Brown] getting through a year a day’

‘April 10th [1895] Beautiful day – windows open – cows grazing – a hot sun and warm wind.’


One covers the full year 1899 in a commercially produced, week per double page volume. Each day is in a bordered rectangle, and in general Elsie wrote inside the lines, keeping the margins for recording the weather.

January 21st, 1899: ‘Rain & terrific gale. Stores arrived. Nothing particular happened except a packet of Tibbles completely vanished. Did half a page of work. F. sent sonnet to Meredith  - also wrote German poem.’

Read the full blog here

Ford on Social Media

Tweets by @FordMadoxFordie

Scholarly Resources

​Critical writing on Ford 

Download sample chapters from International Ford Madox Ford Studies

FMF Society News​


New Ford poetry pamphlet

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​The Greville Press edition of 'On Heaven' and other poems, selected with a foreword by Stephen Rogers, has now sold out

Announcing a new project, the Collected Letters of Ford Madox Ford in 6 volumes! 

The Ford Society is delighted to announce a new project to address this significant gap in twentieth-century literary scholarship. ​Ford was a superb letter-writer, and yet the vast majority of his c.2,800 known letters remains unavailable in published versions. Its General Editors are Sara Haslam and Max Saunders, and Oxford University Press will be publishing the volumes.
​Read more...
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Last Post
Work on Last Post 6 is well advanced.
If you have not received a copy of
Last Post 5, focusing on 'Ford and Food', and guest-edited by Helen Chambers.—but think you should have done!—please get in touch. Details are under 'About Us' on this website.
And  if you don't currently subscribe but would like to, information on how to do so is also there.


Now available!
Homo Duplex: Ford Madox Ford’s Experience and Aesthetics of Alterity, edited and with an introduction by Isabelle Brasme (Montpellier: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2020. ISBN 978-2-36781-343-1)

Ten essays ranging widely over Ford’s life, writing, literary—and personal— networks: this title will be reviewed in Last Post 6.

Recording Available of Jason Andrew’s online talk
 There’s a recording of the recent online event, ‘Biala (1903-2000): The Rash Acts of Rescue and Escape’, a fascinating talk by Jason Andrew, curator of the Biala Estate, with Biala’s letters splendidly voiced by Julia Gleich. The link is: https://youtu.be/W8x21VbWqvc. 
 
The talk was given under the auspices of the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, Inc., in New York. Our thanks to Executive Director Rachel Stern and the Fritz Ascher Society

In Media​

Christina's Fairy Book
The TLS reports (20 May 2022) that the latest catalogue from Jonkers Rare Books lists Christina's Fairy Book (1906) at a price of £9,500.
The catalogue entry states that: 'No copies have been recorded at auction and we are aware of only one other copy being offered for sale in living memory.' The NB columnist adds that Ford 'wrote it for his first child. File next to his other contributions to the genre: the author of The Good Soldier was also the author of The Brown Owl, The Feather and The Queen Who Flew.'

​Parade’s End to China (in Mr Belton’s luggage)
From the latest number of the London Library Magazine (March 2022, number 52). Their regular feature, ‘Meet a Member’, focuses on the journalist and author Pádraig Belton. You might say that he moves around a lot. ‘The Library’s books have accompanied me wherever I’ve been. Middlemarch came to Ukraine, Parade’s End to China, The Picture of Dorian Gray to Siberia and I’ve been making my way through Proust everywhere else.’

Ford doesn’t dwell a great deal on China—apart from his review of Ezra Pound’s Cathay, entitled ‘From China to Peru’ (the first part of his article dealt with maté, an infusion made from a South American shrub)—until The March of Literature, with some pages there on Chinese poetry, plus a great many mentions of Confucius (surely not unconnected with that same Ezra Pound).
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Not strictly Ford-related but certainly of interest is Mr Belton’s recollection that he ‘started out as a foreign correspondent after some terrible advice from John Simpson, the veteran war correspondent. I asked him what he would do in my shoes, and he said, “I’d get on a flight to Ukraine, ring Broadcasting House and start pitching, because they don’t have anyone out there.” It turned out the flights were cheap because no one in their right mind wanted to go there. But I did it and that’s how my career started.’
 
(Thanks to Mary Burgoyne for the tip-off)
 
New audiobook: Parade's End
A recent title from The Audio Book Producers is Ford’s Parade's End (35 hours 12 minutes) read by acclaimed actor Bill Nighy, who is also an honorary member of the Ford Society.
Available through the usual outlets:
http://www.theaudiobookproducers.co.uk/
 


Ford Madox Ford Society


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