Ford Madox Ford Books In Order

Publication Order of The Fifth Queen Books

Publication Order of Parade's End Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was born in Surrey, England on December 17, 1873 to Francis Hueffer and Catherine Madox Brown, and was the oldest of three kids, his sister was Juliet Hueffer (wife of David Soskice and mom of Frank Soskice) and his brother was Oliver Madox Hueffer. Ford’s mom was English while his dad, who became the music critic for The Times, was German.

His paternal grandpa (Johann Hermann Huffer) was the first to publish Westphalian poet and author Annette von Droste-Hulshoff.

His mom’s older half-sister, named Lucy Madox Bron, was the wife of William Michael Rossetti and the mom of Olivia Rossetti Agresti.

Ford was named after his maternal grandpa Ford Madox Brown (the pre-Raphaelite painter) and whose biography Ford would later write.

After their dad died Oliver and Ford went to live with their grandpa in London. Ford went to the University College School in London, however he never studied at university. At the age of 18, in November of 1892, he became a Catholic, which was very much at the encouragement of some of the other Hueffer relatives, however was partly galled by the militant atheism and anarchism of some of his English cousins.

He wrote more than 60 works: criticism, novels, poems, travel essays, and reminiscences. Ford worked as the editor of the English Review and the Transatlantic Review. He collaborated with Joseph Conrad on “Romance”, “The Inheritors”, and other works.

In 1894, he eloped with Elsie Martindale (who was his school girlfriend). The couple got married in Gloucester and moved to Bonnington. In 1901, the couple moved to Winchelsea. They had Christina in 1897 and Katharine in 1900. Ford’s neighbors while they were in Winchelsea included Stephen Crane, HG Wells, WH Hudson, and Henry James (in Rye, located close by).

He suffered from an agoraphobic breakdown because of marital and financial problems in 1904, and went to Germany in order to spend time with his family there and undergo some treatments.

Then in 1909, he left his wife in order to set up a home with Isobel Violet Hunt (an English writer), with whom he published The English Review, a literary magazine. Ford’s wife refused to divorce him and he tried becoming a German citizen in order to obtain a divorce in Germany. Which was unsuccessful. A reference in one illustrated paper to Violet Hunt being “Mrs. Ford Madox Hueffer” gave rise to Mrs. Elsie taking a successful libel action against him in 1913. His relationship with Hunt did not end up surviving through the Great War.

Ford was writing under the name of Ford Madox Hueffer, however he changed it to Ford Madox Ford once World War I ended in 1919, partly because a Teutonic name was in those days disagreeable and partly to fulfill the terms of a tiny legacy. And he was possibly trying to avoid more lawsuits from Elsie in the event of Stella, his new companion, being referred to as “Mrs. Hueffer’.

From 1918 to 1927, he lived with Stella Bowen, who was an Australian artist that was 20 years younger than him. Together they had a daughter named Julia Madox Ford, born in 1920.

Then in the early 1930s, he established a relationship with Janice Biala, who was a Polish born artist from New York, who’d illustrated many of Ford’s later books. It lasted until late in the 1930s.

He spent the final years of his life teaching at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan.

He resided in both the United States and France and died in the year 1939 at the age of 65. He had taken ill in Honfleur, France in June of 1939 and died in Deauville shortly after. Ford is known for having said that if you turn to page 99 and read, then the quality of the whole book is going to be revealed to you.

“The Feather” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 1892. Once upon a time there was this King that reigned over a country to date, for some reason that you might learn later on, undiscovered in a most lovely country, filled with all this land of dappled meadows green dales and groves of oak, sweet rivers, a green cup in a circlet of mountains, and in whose shadow the grass was the greenest. The only road to enter the country lay up the boiling and steep waterfalls, and thereafter through the rugged passes, the channels which the rivers went and cut for themselves.

Therefore, like you might be imagining, the dwellers in this land weren’t too troubled by inroads of hostile nations, and they lived their peaceful lives, managing their own affairs, and troubling little about the whole rest of the world.

“The Good Soldier” is a stand alone novel that was released in 1915. A Tale of Passion, like its subtitle declares, this novel relates the complex sexual and social relationships between an English couple and an American couple, and the growing awareness by John Dowell (the American narrator) of the passions and intrigues behind their orderly Edwardian facade.

It’s the attitude of Dowell his uncertainty, his puzzlement, and the apparently haphazard manner of his narration which make this novel as mysterious and powerful as it is.

Despite its catalogue of despair, death, and insanity, this novel has so many comic moments, and has inspired the work of several distinguished authors, which includes Graham Greene.

“Some Do Not” is the first novel in the “Parade’s End” series and was released in 1924. Christopher Tietjens is an unconventional and brilliant mathematician. He’s married to the unfaithful yet dazzling Sylvia, when (during a rather turbulent weekend), he meets this young Suffragette named Valetine Wannop.

Valentine and Christopher are close to becoming lovers until he’s got to return to his World War I regiment. Unfortunately, Christopher (suffering from amnesia and shell shock) gets sent on back to London. An unforgettable exploration of the tensions of a society that is confronting power, catastrophe, sexuality, violence, and madness, and this narrative examines a critical moment in our history and time.