Tales of Passion

Robert Hampson and Tony Davenport, Eds. Madox Ford: A Reappraisal. Madox Studies 1. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2002. x + 191pp. $46.00. Joseph Wiesenfarth, Ed. History and Representation in Madox Ford's Writings. Madox Studies 3. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004. ix + 241pp. $63.00. Joseph Wiesenfarth, Madox and Regiment of Women: Violet Hunt, Jean Rhys, Stella Bowen, Janice Biala. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. xiv + 217pp. $34.95. Rumours of Ford's neglect, as Max Saunders drolly puts it in Reappraisal, been exaggerated (133). Another aspect of this critical conundrum comes, with equal wit, from Robert E. McDonough in History and Representation: Ford Madox is perhaps best known for not being as well known as he deserves to be (155). Two excellent opening sentences-and we see throughout how engagingly scholars write, as though they had caught his enthusiasm for mot juste, fun of struggle. three books reviewed here present excellent scholarship but also critical experiment and essays from those beyond academe, all gathering in one cumulative roar of approval for their hero. One senses, perhaps, a touch of special pleading but there is a history to this, testified to by Saunders's and McDonough's jokes: unjust neglect of nearly all of Ford's writings beyond Good Soldier and Parade's End tetralogy, and (not unconnected) damage done to his reputation by memoirs and fiction depicting him as a self-mythologizing liar and ladies' man. Biographies of have only served to stir this pot more vigorously. first big scholarly tome, Arthur Mizener's Saddest Story (1971), squarely confronted problems of Ford's self-contradictions and infuriated enthusiasts. As Alan Judd says in History and Representation, [Mizener] developed an almost visceral dislike of his subject. His book left me with a sense of ... injustice; way he wrote did not tally with you sense in Ford's writing (135). Judd, a novelist, then set about his own biography (1990), followed swiftly by Max Saunders with his monumental two volumes: Madox Ford. A Dual Life (1996). Both take Mizener as their point of departure and deal with question of their subject's temperament more sympathetically. Saunders has more recently, almost single-handedly, taken on task of regenerating studies. He has worked with British publisher, Carcanet, to restore Ford's lesser-known writings to print. He launched Madox Society with an annual conference, papers from which are collected in Madox Studies, two volumes of which, first and third, are reviewed here. fifth is currently being edited; sixth conference, on and visual arts, will take place in Genoa in 2007. International is entirely appropriate. scholars these days come not only from UK and USA but also from Finland, Norway, Ankara, France and Italy, all keen to make a case for their subject's neglected novels, poems, social commentary, art history, and editorship. Douglas Goldring once described as The Last Pre-Raphaelite. Criticism now more often sees him as a crucial figure of European modernism or as a proto-postmodernist. difficulty, and excitement, of unearthing hidden is that he was a different person at different times and yet somehow uniquely himself, developing and changing all time, responding to stimuli of moment. Wiesenfarth in Madox and Regiment of Women, for instance, lists various names under which wrote. Born Hermann Hueffer he translated into H. Madox Hueffer, H. Hueffer, Hueffer, M. Hueffer, and Madox Hueffer, the name by which he was best known until 1919 (81) and under which he published Good Soldier. …