Novelist, poet, literary critic, and editor, one of the founding fathers of English Modernism. Ford published over eighty books. A frequent theme was the conflict between traditional British values and those of modern industrial society. Ford was involved with a number of women, including the novelist Jean Rhys who described their unhappy relationship in her book After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie.

"Only two classes of books are of universal appeal: the very best and the very worst."
(from Joseph Conrad, 1924)

Ford was born Ford Madox Hueffer in Merton, Surrey. His father was an author and the music editor of The Times, his grandfather was the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown, and his uncle William Michel Rossetti. Ford's literary-artistic milieu included Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Morris. Partly because of family connections in Germany and France, Ford travelled on the Continent several times as a youth. He was educated at the Praetorius School, Folkestone. When his father died, the family moved to London and Ford continued his education at University College School.

Ford's first book was The Brown Owl, a fairy tale. It was published in 1891 when he was just 18 and illustrated by his grandfather. In 1894 Ford married Elsie Martindale, but the marriage did not succeed.

In the late 1890s Ford met the novelist Joseph Conrad and collaborated with him on The Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903). Ford had an affair with his wife's sister and in 1904 the social ostracism, ill health, and financial anxiety led to a nervous breakdown. In 1906-08 appeared Ford's first major work, the Fifth Queen trilogy (1906-08). It was based on the life of Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII.

In 1908 Ford launched the English Review, which attracted such contributors as Thomas Hardy, H.G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Henry James, and Anatole France. Ford lost control of the Review in 1910, a time of crisis associated with his romance with the writer Violet Hunt. In the same year Ford was ordered to pay his wife funds for the support of their two daughters. When he refused he was sent to Brixton prison for eight days.

At the age of forty-two Ford published The Good Soldier, which is generally considered his masterpiece. The story about adultery and deceit revolves around two couples, Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, and their two American friends, John and Florence Dowell. The story is presented through the mind of John Dowell, who recounts the events of their life, Florence's affair with Edward, the "good soldier," and her subsequent suicide. In Dowell's confused and perhaps unreliable narrative Ford attempted to recreate real thoughts. The technique was a forerunner of such works as Samuel Beckett's Molloy (1951) and J.M. Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country (1977).

During World War I Ford served as a lieutenant in the Welch Regiment. He was gassed in France and was invalided home in 1917. Ford's war experiences inspired some of his poetry and propaganda pieces.

"No more hope, no more glory, not for the nation, not for the world I dare say, no more parades."
(from No More Parades, 1925)

After the Word War I Ford lived in isolation in the country but then moved with the painter Stella Bowen to France. In Paris, he founded The Transatlantic Review. Hemingway became its deputy editor and they published work by Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, E E Cummings and Jean Rhys. Ford changed his name in 1919 from Ford Madox Hueffer to Ford Madox Ford. In 1925 his lover, Violet Hunt, was legally restrained from describing herself as Ford's wife.

Between the years 1924 and 1928 appeared Ford's most ambitious work, the four-volume novel Parade's End. W.H. Auden wrote that "there are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them." The central character in the story is Christopher Tietjens, whose struggle of a public and personal survival is pictured with impressionistic technique. Tietjens's wife is unfaithful, friends betray him, and his deepest values are threatened. In A Man Could Stand Up (1926) and Last Post (1928) Tietjens frees himself from the outdated ethical values and tries to make a separate peace with the world.

The last decade of Ford's life was divided mainly between the U.S. and southern France. In later life he lived with a much younger artist, Janice Biala, an American. In 1937-38 he was visiting lecturer in literature at Olivet College in Michigan. There he started to plan his last work, The March of Literature (1939), an exploration of ancient literature and Mediterranean culture. Ford died at Deauville, France, on June 26, 1939. It is generally agreed that Ford's finest literary achievements were made as a novelist, but he also was significant as an editor who discovered and promoted new writers.

For further reading: Ford Madox Ford by Richard A. Cassell (1961); The Limited Hero in the Novels of Ford Madox Ford by Norman Leer (1966); The Life and Work of Ford Madox Ford by F. McShane (1965); Ford Madox Ford by C.G. Hoffman (1967); The Saddest Story by A. Mizener (1971); Critical Essays on Ford Madox Ford, ed. by R.A. Cassell (1987), Ford Madox Ford by A. Judd (1990); Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life by M. Saunders (1996) - See also: Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford: The Collaborative Texts ; The Ford Madox Ford Homepage ; Dedicatory Letter to Stella Ford

• The Brown Owl, 1891
• The Feather, 1892
• The Shifting of the Fire, 1892 (with J. Conrad)
• The Questions at the Well, 1893 (as Fenil Haig)
• The Queen Who Flew, 1894
• Ford Madox Ford, 1896
• The Cinque Ports, 1900
• Poems for Pictures and Notes for Music, 1900
• The Inheritors, 1901 (with J. Conrad)
• Rossetti, 1902
• Romance, 1903 (with J. Conrad)
• The Face of Night, 1904
• The Benefactor, 1905
• The Soul of London, 1905
• Hans Holbein, 1905
• The Heart of the Country, 1906
• Christina's Fairy Book, 1906
• The Fifth Queen, 1906
• Privy Seal, 1907
• From Inland, 1907
• An English Girl, 1907
• The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 1907
• The Spirit of the People, 1907
• The Fifth Queen Crowned, 1908
• Mr. Apollo, 1908
• The "Half Moon," 1909
• Songs from London, 1910
• A Call, 1910
• The Portrait, 1910
• High Germany, 1911
• Ladies Whose Bright Eyes, 1911 (rev. ed. as Daniel Chaucer, 1935)
• The Simple Life Limited, 1911 (as Daniel Chaucer)
• The Critical Attitude, 1911
• Ancient Lights and Certain New Reflections, 1911
• The New Humpty-Dumpty, 1912 (as Daniel Chaucer)
• The Panel, 1912 (rev. ed. Ring for Nancy, 1913)
• Collected Poems, 1913
• Henry James, 1913
• The Desirable Alien, 1913 (with V. Hunt)
• The Young Lovell, 1913
• Mr. Fleight, 1914
• Antwerp, 1914
• Between St. Dennis and St. George, 1915
• When Blood is their Argument, 1915
• The Good Soldier, 1915
• Zeppelin Nights, 1916 (with V. Hunt)
• translation: The Trial of Barbarians by P. Loti, 1917
• On Heaven, and Poems Written on Active Service, 1918
• A House, 1921
• Thus to Revisit, 1921
• Mr. Bosphorus and the Music, 1923
• The Nature of Crime, 1923 (with J. Conrad)
• The Marsden Case, 1923
• Women and Men, 1923
• Some Do Not, 1924
• Joseph Conrad, 1924
• No More Parades, 1925
• A Man Could Stand Up, 1926
• A Mirror to France, 1924
• New Poems, 1927
• New York Essays, 1927
• New York Is Not America, 1927
• Last Post, 1928
• A Little Less Than Gods, 1928
• No Enemy, 1929
• The English Novel, 1929
• When the Wicked Man, 1931
• Return to Yesterday, 1931
• The Rash Act, 1933
• It Was the Nightingale, 1934
• Henry for Hugh, 1934
• Provence, 1935
• Vive le Roy, 1936
• Mightier Than the Sword, 1937
• The Great Trade Route, 1937
• The March of Literature, 1938
• Critical Writings, 1964
• Letters, 1965
• Buckshee, 1966
• Your Mirror to My Times, 1971
• The Bodley Head Ford Madox Ford, 1962-1971 (5 vols.)
• Pound / Ford, 1982
• The Ford Madox Ford Reader, 1986
• A History of Our Own Time, 1988
• The Correspondence of Ford Madox Ford and Stella Bowen, 1993