Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ford Madox Ford
-
Standard Name: Ford, Ford Madox
Indexed Name: Ford Maddox Ford
Used Form: Ford Madox Hueffer
Used Form: Ford Madox H. Hueffer
Used Form: Ford H. Madox Hueffer
FMF
(who began publishing as Ford Madox Hueffer) was a significant figure in British and international modernism, and a prolific writer during the 1890s and the earlier part of the twentieth century. He produced fiction, criticism (of art, literature, and culture), autobiography, and other genres, and edited both the transatlantic review, which began and ended in 1924, and the English Review. Best remembered for the experimental aspects of his early novel The Good Soldier and of his war tetralogy, Parade's End, he was also a factor in the personal and literary development of two women writers, Violet Hunt
and Jean Rhys
.
Rogers, John H., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 162. Gale Research, 1996.
162: 147
though she and her lover Ford Madox Ford
were never legally wed.
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
Ford
had not become a naturalized German citizen by September 1911, but he reaffirmed to Hunt that they would soon marry. She then met him for a holiday in Germany and France. During this...
Family and Intimate relationships
Jean Rhys
JR
(still married to her first, bigamous husband
) had an affair with writer Ford Madox Ford
that lasted nearly two years.
Angier, Carole. Jean Rhys: Life and Work. Little, Brown, 1990.
131, 133, 156-7
Family and Intimate relationships
Charlotte Eliza Humphry
Their daughter, Helen Pearl Humphry
(later known as H. Pearl Adam), was born in the same area of London in 1882 (her birth being registered in the second quarter), and, like her mother, she pursued...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
A number of Hunt's and Ford's associates testified that the couple appeared frequently in public as man and wife, and that others believed them to be married. No documentation was produced, however, of Ford
's...
Family and Intimate relationships
Jean Rhys
Shortly after JR
met Ford Madox Ford
, her husband, Jean Lenglet
, was arrested for stealing money.
Angier, Carole. Jean Rhys: Life and Work. Little, Brown, 1990.
138, 140
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
VH
met Ford Madox Hueffer
, later Ford Madox Ford, at a London dinner party held by John Galsworthy
.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster, 1990.
136
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
VH
marked several points of decline in her relationship with Ford
. She told Rebecca West
that Ford was somewhat repelled
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster, 1990.
220
by her after he learned in 1914 that she had syphilis. She also...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
VH
met with Ford Madox Ford
at his home for dinner, after leaving the office of the English Review, where they both worked; she prevented his suicide attempt and they became lovers the next evening.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster, 1990.
148-50
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
Though often temporarily separated from him by a range of commitments and conflicts, VH
lived with Ford Madox Hueffer
in London; she leased their primary residence, South Lodge.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster, 1990.
152
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
Though she was not named in the suit, VH
was stunned and humiliated when she saw in a news headline that a court had ordered her lover, Ford Madox Ford
, to return to his...
Family and Intimate relationships
Jean Rhys
While Lenglet was away in Holland, JR
had to subsist with very little money. She stayed with a friend, the prominent Paris journalist and writer H. Pearl Adam
(daughter of Mrs C. E. Humphry
...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
Relying on false information given by Ford
, the Daily Mirror published a piece on his marriage to VH
; similar statements in The Sphere and The Sketch prompted controversy. Ford's legal wife
planned to...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
The libel trial of The Throne magazine began; the ultimately successful suit had been brought by Elsie Ford
, who objected to a review which wrongly referred to VH
as the wife of Elsie's husband,...
Family and Intimate relationships
Fay Weldon
During her marriage she and Edgar entertained the literary and avant-garde world: she later regaled her grand-daughter with irreverent stories of Joseph Conrad
, Jean Rhys
(Such a louche young woman),
qtd. in
Weldon, Fay. Auto da Fay. Flamingo, 2002.
102
Ford Madox Ford
Timeline
3 May 1869: Catherine Madox Brown made her exhibition...
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Virago, 1989.
85
McMaster, Juliet. That Mighty Art of Black-and-White. Linley Sambourne, Punch, and the Royal Academy. Ad Hoc Press, 2009.
3
2 July 1914: The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited...
Building item
2 July 1914
The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited by Wyndham Lewis
, formally announced the arrival of Vorticism, an avant-garde movement in art.
Wees, William C. Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde. University of Toronto Press, 1972.
19, 162-79, 213-27
2 September 1914: The British War Propaganda Bureau (newly...
Writing climate item
2 September 1914
The British War Propaganda Bureau
(newly formed along the lines of a similar body in Germany) summoned twenty-five writers to discuss the production of texts that would boost national feeling and the war effort.