It Was the Nightingale

FORD MADOX FORD (1873-1939), one of the shaping spirits of modern literature, was a great editor, essayist, critic, advocate, and above all a great novelist. The Good Soldier and the Tietjens trilogy are acknowledged masterpieces. The Rash Act has been hailed as a major addition to the Ford canon. Of his novels Carcanet publish The Good Soldier, Parade's End, The Rash Act and Ladies Whose Bright Eyes. Carcanet also publish The English Novel, The Ford Madox Ford Reader, A History of Our Own Time and Selected Poems, War Prose, Return to Yesterday and other titles. Some of these have been released as part of The Millennium Ford that will bring all his major work back into circulation. Ford Hermann Hueffer (he adopted the name Ford Madox Ford in 1919) was born in Surrey in 1873. His father was an author and musicologist and his mother was the daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown. He quickly took to writing: at seventeen he'd written a children's story, in 1892 his first novel was released. Following the death of Ford Madox Brown, he wrote his grandfather's biography. He was an experienced writer when he met Joseph Conrad and they began a literary relationship which proved highly fruitful for the development of both writer's conception of the novelist's task. They collaborated on The Inheritors (1901) and other books. Ford continued to write prolifically on his own account in a variety of forms: art criticism, poetry, essays and novels. He wrote the book The Good Soldier which was published in 1915, the same year he took a commission in the army. His experience furnished him with material for Parade's End. His critical study The English Novel was published in 1929. He continued to publish novels regularly, as well as other works, notably an extended Collected Poems in 1936. He died in Deauville, France in 1939.