Welcome to the official website of the Ford Madox Ford Society
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
Now on open-access:
​Last Post​ 3, 4 & 5!
Elizabeth Hibbert's two-part survey of the critical reception of Parade's End; a Ford story reprinted; pieces on C. H. Sisson, Walter de la Mare and Gilbert Cannan; a full menu of Ford and food; reviews, our three regular columnists and more.  ​

​News and Events

Special Issue Humanities Journal on Ford Madox Ford’s War Writing

In this, the centenary year of Ford’s landmark publication of Some Do Not…, the Ford Society is delighted to announce that seven open access articles in this Special Issue are now available to view. Follow the link below to find out more about Ford taking flight and finding shelter above and below the war-time clouds, and the poetics and ethics of his war-writing – from Imperial excess to his stylistic approach.
 
Humanities | Special Issue : Ford Madox Ford's War Writing (mdpi.com)
 
The Issue reflects on the broad range of Ford’s war writing, covering topics from references to seventeenth-century poetry in Parade’s End, to his lesser-known novel The Marsden Case and his short stories. This Special Issue brings together essays from established scholars and early-career researchers and will be a valuable addition to Ford scholarship. We hope you enjoy the read!

MHRA Interview

Barbara Burns of the Modern Humanities Research Association talks to Professor Max Saunders (University of Birmingham), Co-Editor of The Collected Letters of Ford Madox Ford (OUP), and Dr Lucinda Borkett-Jones, the project’s MHRA Research Associate this year.
https://www.mhra.org.uk/news/2024/04/16/the-great-networker.html

Ford Madox (Hueffer) Ford letters sought!

The editors of the multi-volume Collected Letters of Ford Madox Ford for Oxford University Press would be glad to hear from anyone holding letters from (or to) Ford, or about him, or who is aware of the whereabouts of any such letters. Any relevant information will be gratefully received and acknowledged.
With thanks,
​Sara Haslam ([email protected]) and Max Saunders ([email protected])

From the Society blog

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A New Forest Typo: The Origins of Branshaw Teleragh
By Andrew Gustar
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In the early 1800s, a message could be sent between Plymouth and London in a matter of minutes. The Admiralty Shutter Telegraph, devised by Lord George Murray during the Napoleonic Wars, consisted of a series of hilltop signalling stations, each manned by a naval officer and two ratings, who sent signals by opening and closing combinations of six shutters in a vertical frame, and monitored signals from neighbouring stations through powerful telescopes. Similar communication lines were in place between the Admiralty and Portsmouth, Deal, Sheerness and Great Yarmouth.

One such telegraph station was in the New Forest, Read More...


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. Read More...

Ford on Social Media

Scholarly Resources

​Critical writing on Ford 

Download sample chapters from International Ford Madox Ford Studies

FMF Society News​

Backlisted Ford

The excellent Backlisted, the literary podcast presented by John Mitchinson and Andy Miller, has launched a series of live shows at Foyles in central London. It kicked off with a discussion of The Good Soldier with guest speaker, novelist and screenwriter Alex Michaelides, on 15 May.
This episode is now available online:
www.backlisted.fm/episodes/212-the-good-soldier-by-ford-madox-ford
A major 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.3,000 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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