Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer (HEF-ər); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review were important in the development of early 20th-century English and American literature.

Ford is now remembered for his novels The Good Soldier (1915), the Parade's End tetralogy (1924–1928) and The Fifth Queen trilogy (1906–1908). The Good Soldier is frequently included among the great literature of the 20th century, including the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, The Observer's "100 Greatest Novels of All Time", and The Guardian's "1,000 novels everyone must read".

Early life

Ford was born in Merton in Surrey to Catherine Madox Brown and Francis Hueffer, the eldest of three; his brother was Oliver Madox Hueffer and his sister was Juliet Hueffer, the wife of David Soskice and mother of Frank Soskice. Ford's father, who became a music critic for The Times, was German and his mother English. His paternal grandfather Johann Hermann Hüffer was the first to publish the Westphalian poet and author Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. He was named after his maternal grandfather, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown, whose biography he would eventually write. His mother's older half-sister was Lucy Madox Brown, the wife of William Michael Rossetti and mother of Olivia Rossetti Agresti.

In 1889, after the death of their father, Ford and Oliver went to live with their grandfather in London. Ford attended the University College School in London, but never studied at university. In November 1892, at 18, he became a Catholic, "very much at the encouragement of some Hueffer relatives, but partly (he confessed) galled by the 'militant atheism and anarchism' of his English cousins."