Parade's End

by Ford Madox Ford

Overview

Ford Madox Ford's acclaimed masterpiece is widely considered one of the best novels of the twentieth century.

Parade's End was originally published in four parts (Some Do Not . . ., No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up—, and Last Post) between 1924 and 1928. It explores the world of the English ruling class as it descends into the chaos of World War I, as seen through the life of Christopher Tietjens, an officer from a wealthy family who is torn between his unfaithful wife, Sylvia, and his suffragette mistress, Valentine. With scenes of sexual warfare that rival the devastation of its battlefield scenes, Parade's End is a profound dramatization of one man's internal struggles during a time of brutal world conflict. The culminating achievement of Ford's career, it fulfills his ambitious conception of the novelist's role as the historian of the present, capturing the essence of the age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679417286
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/15/1992
Series:	Parade's End Series
Pages:	968
Sales rank:	513,075
Product dimensions:	5.27(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.76(d)

About the Author

Ford Madox Ford was born Ford Hermann Hueffer in England in 1873. In 1919 he changed his name to Ford Madox Ford in honour of his grandfather, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown, whose biography he had written. Ford was well-known for both his fiction and his criticism. He founded two influential journals, The English Review in 1908 and The Transatlantic Review in 1924, in which he championed many of the leading modernist writers of the day. His most famous novels include the tetralogy Parade’s End and The Good Soldier, which are still ranked among the greatest literary works of the twentieth century. Ford died in 1939, at age sixty-five, in France.

Table of Contents

	Some Do Not...	3
	No More Parades	291
	A Man Could Stand Up--	503
	The Last Post	677

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

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

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher

11/01/2013
Four novels, published from 1924 to 1928, about an Englishman's world both at home and as an army officer. Stylistically, not an easy read. A general audience may be more drawn to the HBO five-part series, now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Library Journal

Ford’s four connected works, a neglected and sometimes problematic classic, track the blighted life of brilliant, aristocratic, and tremendously “old school” Christopher Tietjens before, during, and after WWI. Steven Crossley’s British-accented voice is rich and endlessly listenable. He keeps characters’ voices distinct and provides an array of accents differing by class and region. Rather than just reading, he performs a single-handed drama. His excellent pacing, subtle variation of intonation patterns, and sensitivity to the text seem natural and effortless. He enlivens the novels’ long interior monologues with variations of tone and emphasis that also interpret the characters’ thoughts and feelings, rendering them more vivid and comprehensible than most readers could on their own. Listening to Crossley read PARADE’S END is, in many ways, better than reading it oneself. W.M. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2012 - AudioFile