Parade's End: Pt. 3: A Man Could Stand Up: A Novel

Description

"A Man Could Stand Up", the third volume of "Parade's End", brings Ford's characters to the 'crack across the table of History', across which lie their uncertain post-war futures. Divided into three parts, the novel is a kaleidoscopic vision of society at a climactic moment. The Armistice Day fireworks heard by Valentine Wannop in London with which the novel opens are echoed in the nightmare bombardment of the second part, as we are taken back to the war and Christopher Tietjens, staggering through the mud of "No Man's Land" with a wounded soldier in his arms. The final section returns to Armistice Day and joins the two characters in a frenetic dance, while Tietjens' wartime comrades smash glasses drunkenly around them. "A Man Could Stand Up" includes: the first reliable text, based on the hand-corrected typescript and first editions; a major critical introduction by Sara Haslam, Senior Lecturer in Literature at the Open University and author of "Fragmenting Modernism: Ford Madox Ford, the Novel and the Great War"; an account of the novel's composition and reception; annotations explaining historical references, military terms, literary and topical allusions; a full textual apparatus including transcriptions of significant deletions and revisions; and, a bibliography of further reading.

Ford Madox Ford, one of the shaping spirits of modern literature, was a great editor, essayist, critic, advocate, and above all a great novelist. The Good Soldier and the Tietjens novels (which make up Parade's End) are acknowledged masterpieces. Born in Surrey in 1873, his father was an author and musicologist and his mother was the daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown. He quickly took to writing: at seventeen he had written a children's story, in 1892 his first novel was released. The Good Soldier was published in 1915, the same year he took a commission in the army. His experience furnished him with material for Parade's End. He continued to publish novels regularly, as well as other works, notably an extended Collected Poems in 1936. He died in Deauville, France in 1939.

"It is a model edition, definitive and indispensable: copiously annotated, with a full textual apparatus, bibliography of further reading and the first publication of the original ending." --Kate McLoughlin, contributor, "Times Literary Supplement", on "Parade's End"