An occasional series of articles from Ford Madox Ford Society members.

1925 and all that (a handful of Fordian notes)

1925 and all that (a handful of Fordian notes)

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…

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A New Forest Typo Part 2: The Inhabitants of Lyburn Park

A New Forest Typo Part 2: The Inhabitants of Lyburn Park

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 nearest large h…

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A New Forest Typo Part 1: The Origins of Branshaw Teleragh

A New Forest Typo Part 1: The Origins of Branshaw Teleragh

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…

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News from the Lamb family archives: Elsie speaks

News from the Lamb family archives: Elsie speaks

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…

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‘The Turgenev/Flaubert Thing’, by Paul Ottaviano

‘The Turgenev/Flaubert Thing’, by Paul Ottaviano

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…

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