$16.99

845 Pages
©2006 (originally 1924-1928)
Carcanet Fiction (Carcanet)

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'There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.' — W.H.Auden, 1961 

Parade's End is the title Ford Madox Ford gave to his greatest work, the four Tietjens novels which, in Graham Greene's words, tell 'the terrifying story of a good man tortured, pursued, driven into revolt, and ruined as far as the world is concerned by the clever devices of a jealous and lying wife'. He wanted to see the book printed in one volume: Some Do Not (1924), No More Parades (1925) and A Man Could Stand Up (1926), with his afterthought, The Last Post (1928). 

Christopher Tietjens is the last of a breed, the Tory gentleman, which the Great War, a savage marriage to Sylvia, and the qualities inherent in his nature, define and unravel. Here the War's attritions offered no escape from domestic witchcraft. Opposite Tietjens is Macmaster, a Scot, different in class and culture, at once friend and foil. Here Ford's art and his human vision achieve their greatest complexity and subtlety. 

With an afterword by Gerald Hammond
Gerald Hammond is Professor of English at the University of Manchester, author of The Making of the English Bible, Fleeting Things and other critical volumes and editor of the Selected Poems of John Skelton and of Richard Lovelace in the Fyfield Books series. 

This volume is part of The Millennium Ford project which aims to bring all the major writings of this great writer back into circulation.

Ford Madox Ford (the name he adopted in 1919: he was originally Ford Hermann Hueffer) was born in Merton, Surrey, in 1873. His mother, Catherine, was the daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown. His father, Francis Hueffer, was a German emigré, a musicologist and music critic for The Times. Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were his aunt and uncle by marriage. Ford published his first book, a children’s fairytale, when he was seventeen. He collaborated with Joseph Conrad from 1898 to 1908, and also befriended many of the best writers of his time, including Henry James, H.G. Wells, Stephen Crane, John Galsworthy and Thomas Hardy. He is best known for his novels, especially The Fifth Queen (1906–8), The Good Soldier (1915) and Parade’s End (1924–8). He was also an influential poet and critic, and a brilliant magazine editor. He founded the English Review in 1908, discovering D.H.Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound, who became another close friend. Ford served as an officer in the Welch Regiment 1915–19. After the war he moved to France. In Paris he founded the transatlantic review, taking on Ernest Hemingway as a sub-editor, discovering Jean Rhys and Basil Bunting, and publishing James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. In the 1920s and 1930s he moved between Paris, New York, and Provence. He died in Deauville in June 1939. The author of over eighty books, Ford is a major presence in twentieth-century writing.

Of his novels, Carcanet publish The Good Soldier, Parade's End, The Rash Act and Ladies Whose Bright Eyes. Carcanet also publish The English Novel, The Ford Madox Ford Reader, A History of Our Own Time and Selected Poems, War Prose, Return to Yesterday, and other titles. Some of these have been released as part of The Millennium Ford series, which aims to bring all his major work back into circulation.