The Good Soldier Paperback - 2003

Name: The Good Soldier
Price: 9.80 GBP
Availability: InStock
Author: Ford Madox Ford
ISBN: 9781592241491

by Ford Madox Ford

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About this book

The Good Solider: A Tale of Passion by Ford Madox Hueffer (later, Ford Madox Ford) is set just before World War I. The “good solider” of the title is Captain Edward Ashburnman, a retired Indian army veteran, who — along with his wife Leonora — from relationships with two Americans, John and Florence Dowell. The novel follows the unraveling of Ashburman’s and Dowell’s marriages through a series of flashbacks and deals with issues, such as adultery, betrayal, and moral confusion, which often go unmentioned in polite society.

The Good Soldier was originally titled The Saddest Story, a reference to the first line: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” However, with the onset of the war, the publisher requested a title revision. Ford sarcastically suggested The Good Soldier, as he himself had already enlisted in the war, and the name stuck. Ford left to serve in World War I as an infantry solider later on in 1915, the same year the book was published. The Good Solider is ranked 30th on Modern Library’s list of “100 Best” English-language novels of the 20th century.

Summary

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.

From the publisher

The Good Soldier is considered Ford's masterpiece. This tale of adultery and deceit centers around two couples, Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, and their American friends, John and Florence Dowell. John Dowell narrates the events of Florence's affair with Edward, the "good soldier," and her subsequent suicide.

Through Dowell's confused and perhaps unreliable narrative, Ford attempted to recreate real thoughts. This literary technique was a forerunner to literary techniques employed by such later writers as Samuel Beckett and J.M. Coetzee.

Ford Madox Ford (Ford Madox Hueffer) was born in 1873. He was a novelist, poet, literary critic, editor, and one of the founding fathers of English Modernism. He published over eighty books, including two collaborations with Joseph Conrad (Inheritors in 1901 and Romance in 1903). He died in 1939.

First Edition Identification

John Lane of the Bodley Head first published The Good Soldier in the UK in 1915. The first edition is bound in brick red cloth and has the same date listed on the title page as the copyright page.