Ford Madox Ford

The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, a literary technique that formed part of Ford's pioneering view of literary impressionism. Ford employs the device of the unreliable narrator to great effect as the main character gradually reveals a version of events that is quite different from what the introduction leads the reader to believe. The novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Ford's messy personal life. The novel's original title was The Saddest Story, but after the onset of World War I, the publishers asked Ford for a new title. Ford suggested (sarcastically) The Good Soldier, and the name stuck. The writer now known as Ford Madox Ford was a prolific novelist, poet, critic, editor, and reminiscer. He is one of the most intriguing, versatile, and often still misunderstood of the great Modernist writers. He was brought up in London, the grandson of Ford Madox Brown, the painter closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. 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.