The Good Soldier - Softcover

Ford, Ford Madox

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1467964565 ISBN 13: 9781467964562

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011

Synopsis

The Good Soldier is a novel by English novelist Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, a literary technique that formed part of Ford's pioneering view of literary impressionism. Ford employs the device of the unreliable narrator to great effect as the main character gradually reveals a version of events that is quite different from what the introduction leads the reader to believe. The novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Ford's messy personal life. The novel's original title was The Saddest Story, but after the onset of World War I, the publishers asked Ford for a new title. Ford suggested (sarcastically) The Good Soldier, and the name stuck. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Good Soldier 30th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2015, the BBC ranked The Good Soldier 13th on its list of the 100 greatest British novels. The Good Soldier is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the stories of those dissolutions as well as the deaths of three characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological fashion that leaves gaps for the reader to fill. The "plot" is not then the real story; the reader is asked to consider whether they believe Dowell and what part he truly played in how this "saddest story ever told" actually plays out.

About this title

From the Back Cover

One of the most important works of twentieth-century British literature, The Good Soldier addresses the lives and interrelationships between two couples: one American, one British. A tragicomic novel of manners, in which John Dowell narrates the disintegration of both his own and another marriage, the work's depiction of passion and intrigue offers an ironic reading of Edwardian-era values. The Broadview edition features the text of the first edition of the novel published by John Lane and The Bodley Head in 1915. It also includes: other writings by Ford Madox Ford ("On Heaven," excerpts from Henry James: A Critical Study, "On Impressionism," and "Techniques"); contemporary reviews; and Ezra Pound's obituary of Ford Madox Ford.

From the Inside Flap

Ford Madox Ford wrote The Good Soldier, the book on which his reputation most surely rests, in deliberate emulation of the nineteenth-century French novels he so admired. In this way he was able to explore the theme of sexual betrayal and its poisonous after-effects with a psychological intimacy as yet unknown in the English novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1467964565
• ISBN 13: 9781467964562
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 136