Society Blog

by Sara Haslam Ever wondered what Ford scholars get up to in their spare time? Many of them have written on Ford’s contemporaries, and this 3rd May, we republish a post by Sara Haslam, reflecting on her work on Evelyn Waugh’s novel, Helena (1950). Evelyn’s father published Ford, and his brothe…

By Paul Skinner Glancing at any recent headline, it may come as no surprise that some of us are willingly absorbed in another year entirely, precisely a hundred years back. In publication terms, 1925 might not astonish as did 1922, so often termed the ‘annus mirabilis’ of Anglo-American modernism th…

By Andrew Gustar In the first part of this post, I discovered that Branshaw Teleragh – location of Edward and Leonora Ashburnham’s house in Ford’s The Good Soldier – was based on a misprint on a map of the New Forest, an area that Ford visited several times between 1902 and 1913. The …

By Andrew Gustar In the early 1800s, a message could be sent between Plymouth and London in a matter of minutes. The Admiralty Shutter Telegraph, devised by Lord George Murray during the Napoleonic Wars, consisted of a series of hilltop signalling stations, each manned by a naval officer and two rat…

By Sara Haslam August 1893: The Questions at the Well by Fenil Haig [the first of many pseudonyms Ford used] was published by Digby, Long & Co., dedicated to Miss Elsie Martindale. Aside from the number of Elsie Martindale’s typed and handwritten story manuscripts, and the books of For…

I am 51 years old. I am not an academic. But I have remained a literary buff all these years. When I was a starry eyed young man of 19, I read War and Peace. After high school my intellect blossomed a bit. And I did not just read it because I was under the academic…