FORD, Ford Madox

(1873-1939)

   UK writer and editor, born (Joseph Leonard) Ford (Hermann) Madox Hueffer into a literary family of German descent. In protest at German behaviour in WWI he changed his name to FMF, though typically he refrained from doing so until hostilities had ended; both original books and reprints after 1919 are signed FMF. A versatile man of letters, founder/editor of the English Review and the Transatlantic Review, he is best known for The Good Soldier (1915) and the four Tietjens novels assembled as Parade's End (omni 1950 US). His first book, The Brown Owl (1892), was a children's fantasy. The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story(1901) with Joseph CONRAD (whom see for details) is sf. Fantasies include Mr Apollo (1908), The "Half Moon": A Romance of the Old World and the New (1909), a complex story of 17th-century witchcraft, and Ladies whose Bright Eyes (1911), a TIME-TRAVEL tale. The Simple Life Limited (1911), as by Daniel Chaucer, attacks utopianism. FMF inserted into the murkily RURITANIAN The New Humpty-Dumpty (1912), also as by Daniel Chaucer, arather savage caricature of H.G. WELLS, who appears as Herbert Pett, a "cockney" Great Thinker and philanderer, with a high-pitched voice, whofatally intermixes sex and revolution. Vive le Roy (1936 US) delineates a struggle for power in a future monarchical France.

   JC