Ford Madox Hueffer

Biography

Ford Madox Hueffer was born on December 17^th of 1873 at home, at 5 Fair Lawn Villas, Merton, Surrey. He was born to Francis Hueffer and Catherine Madox Brown. Francis was an immigrant, he was a musicologist and an author. Catherine was a painter, she used to assist her father in his studio, a painter too, who taught painters who would later become pre-Raphaelites. Catherine and Francis would arguably not be very well off, although she inherited all her mother´s property. After his fathers’ sudden death in 1888, Ford and his brother Oliver went to live with their grandfather, Madox Brown. They adored him so much that Ford changed his middle name to Madox. Ford married Elsie Martinlade and moved to Winchelsea, where he would meet prominent authors such as H. G. Wells. He served in WWI where he almost died. Ford did not have a stable love life; he had affairs with Mary Martindale, his first wife's sister, and Jean Rhys. He had long term relationships with his wife Elsie Martinlade, Violet Hunt and Stella Bowen. He died on the 26^th of June of 1939 in in Deauville, France, where he is buried.

As a child, he offered a chair to Ivan Turgenev, a multifaceted Russian writer. At the age of 17, in 1891, he published his first book, a fairy story, “The Brown Owl” and in 1892 he published “The Shifting of Fire.” Before that, however, Ford wanted to be a composer, influenced by his parents, one being a musicologist and author, and the other being a painter with a family tradition. He did not go to university, but he did receive fair education at University College School. Ford got involved in artistic and intellectual circles, which gave him access to the acquaintance of many important Russian politicians. When he moved to Winchelsea, he befriended some of his neighbors, among them: Henry James, Stephen Crane, and H. G. Wells. He also befriended many critics: Douglas Goldring, William Carlos Williams, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Robert Lowell, John Crowe Ransom, Graham Greene, which ensured he literary career would go forwards. In 1898, he met Joseph Conrad, who would collaborate with him on a few novels and even on The English Review, a literary magazine that would shape the Modernist era. He earned the reputation of being the century’s greatest literary editor. Even when the Review lost money, and he was ousted as editor, he still contributed writing in the magazine. He joined the army in 1915, and used his experiences there as material for Parade’s End, perhaps one of the greatest literary works about the First World War.

Ford mostly lived in London and its surroundings. He wrote throughout all his life, therefore, most of his writing took place around London. He moved to Germany after an agoraphobic breakdown, but went back to England and lived in Pulborough. Due to the roughness of winter, he lived in France for a while, in Cap Ferrat and Paris, where he engaged in artistic circles and activities. He also traveled to the United States, specially New York, where he lived for a time.

The short story, “The Saddest Story,” is a glimpse of what would become his greatest novel, The Good Solider. In fact, this short story is the beginning of that novel, reduced, of course, since the novels adds and displaces chunks of the story. The story deals with men’s polygamous desire. The main characters are not English, they are American, which allows Ford to criticize British culture under the understanding of people who are visiting Europe.