The Good Soldier - Couverture souple

Ford, Ford Madox

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 039392792X ISBN 13 : 9780393927924

Editeur : WW Norton & Co, 2012

Synopsis

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.' Wealthy American John Dowell describes in a disarmingly casual, compellingly intimate manner how he and his wife Florence meet an English couple in a German spa resort. They become friends over the years and gradually the history of their relationships and the passions that lie behind the orderly Edwardian facade are unveiled. Dowell is the archetypal 'unreliable narrator', and his casual revelations are both unexpected and explosive. A masterpiece of early Modernism and a virtuoso performance of literary skill, Ford's 'Tale of Passion' reflects contemporary interests in psychology, sexuality, and the New Woman. Its portrayal of the destruction of a civilized elite anticipates the cataclysm of the First World War, which erupted while Ford was finishing the book. This new edition includes Ford's important essay 'On Impressionism', which sheds valuable light on his artistic technique. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe.Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur :

Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature. He is now best remembered for The Good Soldier and the Parade's End tetralogy. The Good Soldier, a novel set just before World War I which chronicles the tragic lives of two "perfect couples" using intricate flashbacks. In a "Dedicatory Letter to Stella Ford” that prefaces the novel, Ford reports that a friend pronounced The Good Soldier “the finest French novel in the English language!” Ford was involved in the British war propaganda after the outbreak of World War I. He worked for the War Propaganda Bureau managed by C. F. G. Masterman with other writers and scholars who were popular in those years, such as Arnold Bennett, G. K. Chesterton, John Galsworthy, Hilaire Belloc and Gilbert Murray. Ford wrote two propaganda books for Masterman, namely When Blood is Their Argument: An Analysis of Prussian Culture (1915), with the help of Richard Aldington, and Between St. Dennis and St. George: A Sketch of Three Civilizations (1915). After writing the two propaganda books, Ford enlisted in the Welsh Regiment on 30 July 1915, and was sent to France, thus ending his cooperation with the War Propaganda Bureau. His combat experiences and his previous propaganda activities inspired his tetralogy Parade's End (1924–1928), set in England and on the Western Front before, during and after World War I. Ford also wrote dozens of novels as well as essays, poetry, memoir and literary criticism, and collaborated with Joseph Conrad on two novels, The Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903). His novel Ladies Whose Bright Eyes (1911, extensively revised in 1935)[1] is, in a sense, the reverse of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Présentation de l'éditeur :

THIS is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme intimacy—or, rather with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove's with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. This is, I believe, a state of things only possible with English people of whom, till today, when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew nothing whatever. Six months ago I had never been to England, and, certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: WW Norton & Co
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 039392792X
• ISBN 13: 9780393927924
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 2
• Nombre de pages: 448