Red cloth binding with gilt title on the spine and front board.

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First edition. Octavo. pp xvi, 173. Two pages of adverts at rear. Reddish cloth, top edge gilt, in the same format as that of The Heart of the Country and The Soul of London. The last of the author’s publications with Rivers, disappointing sales having caused something of a rift. That said, as the photographs witness, this is a good well kept rare book with an excellent focus on the English character.

Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer (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 100 Best Novels, The Observer′s “100 Greatest Novels of All Time”, and The Guardian′s “1000 novels everyone must read”.

Anthony Burgess described Ford as the “greatest British novelist” of the 20th century. Graham Greene was also a great admirer, and more recently Julian Barnes who has written essays about Ford and his work. Professor Max Saunders is the author of an authoritative biography of Ford, published in two volumes by Oxford University Press in 1996, followed up by a single volume focusing on two of Ford’s novels, The Good Soldier (1915), the Parade’s End tetralogy (1924–1928), in 2023. Saunders has also edited some of Ford’s oeuvre reissued by the Carcanet Press.