Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life

Review from previous edition Max Saunders knows more about Ford Madox Ford than any other living person. He also understands him better than anyone else. His scrupulous and passionate biography will never be superseded. * Julian Barnes *
magisterial biography ... It is a work of exemplary erudition, critical intelligence and sympathy. * Times Literary Supplement *
This is an outstanding Life and a major contribution to literary scholarship. This biography releases him from the casualty clearing stations in which he has been detained for so long and restores him to active literary service. * Ian McIntyre, The Times *
Saunders has produced a fine critical life which will be invaluable for all students of Ford's work and influence ... he has done a magnificent service to his subject in his thoughtful analysis of Ford's great tetralogy, Parade's End ... Saunders has produced a valuable academic work. Thoughtful, lucid and scrupulously objective, he restores Ford to us as a brilliant, much-maligned man - and a major literary figure. * Miranda Seymour, The Independent *
Saunders has made a remarkable tribute to his subject, and his subject is irresistible. * Adrian Wright, The Literary Review *
it is admirable that OUP decided to give Saunders a full-sized canvas to work on ... he makes excellent use of it ... This is the account to which all students of Ford will turn first. A main attraction of this majestically complete, balanced and well-written biography is the lavish quotation. This is a life which makes one want to go back to read, and re-read, Ford's works. * John Sutherland, The Sunday Times *
definitive and ample biography ... Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life is both meticulous to a fault and bright with insight * The Times Higher Education Supplement *
Saunders's book is a serious and valuable interpretation which enables us to look at Ford's dual life with much greater complexity. * The Guardian *
No admirer of Ford Madox Ford will want to miss Max Saunders's two-volume ... about this extraordinary and complicated man. Saunders triumphantly establishes him as one of the most generous and influential figures of his time. * Miranda Seymour, The Sunday Times *
persuasive and immensely authoritative account of a man who has, for far too long, been overshadowed by his bitchy and thankless protégés * Miranda Seymour, The Independent *
Mr Saunders meets the challenge through his remorseless scholarship. In a sense, his two volumes are a lesson in anatomy, with the literary surgeon taking justifiable pride in his skill with the scalpel and delighting in the exposure of that particular sinew, that particular nerve ... no one wishing to understand Ford dare ignore his probings. * The Economist *
The second, concluding volume of Max Saunders's magisterial biography of Ford Madox Ford amply fulfils the promise of the first. Max Saunders probably knows as much as can be known about Ford and his writing, and he reproduces it here with an intelligence, integrity and consideration for the reader that his subject - above all - would have appreciated. This must surely become the source-book for all future Fordians. * Alan Judd, The Daily Telegraph *
The deep focus of Max Saunder's Ford Madox Ford, now completed by a second volume ... means that any other prospective Ford biographers out there can shut up shop. * Julian Barnes, The Sunday Times *
his studies are as fresh as they are minute ... this is a celebration that could go on indefinitely, always intelligent, always considerate, always affectionate * London Review of Books *