Ford Madox Ford & Ford Madox Ford 
Parade’s End Volume IV 
Last Post

Last Post, the fourth and final volume of Parade's End, is set on a single post-war summer's day. Valentine Wannop and Christopher Tietjens share a cottage in Sussex with Tietjens' brother and sister-in-law. Through their differing perspectives, Ford explores the tensions between his characters in a changing world, haunted by the experience of war, facing an insecure future for themselves and for England. The Tietjens' ancestral home has been let to an American, its great tree felled; those like Tietjens who have served in the war find there is no place for them in a demoralised civilian society. The celebrations of Armistice Day have been replaced by the uncertainties of peacetime. 'How are we to live?' asks Valentine, as a death and an imminent birth bring Ford's great sequence to a close.Last Post includes:– the first reliable text based on the hand-corrected typescript of first editions– a major critical introduction by Paul Skinner, editor of Ford's novel No Enemy and of Ford Madox Ford: Literary Contacts (International Ford Madox Ford Studies 6)– an account of the novel's composition and reception– annotations explaining historical references and literary and topical allusions– a full textual apparatus including transcriptions of significant deletions and revisions– a bibliography of further reading

关于作者

Ford Madox Ford (the name he adopted in 1919: he was originally Ford Hermann Hueffer) was born in Merton, Surrey, in 1873. His mother, Catherine, was the daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown. His father, Francis Hueffer, was a German emigré, a musicologist and music critic for The Times. Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were his aunt and uncle by marriage. Ford collaborated with Joseph Conrad from 1898 to 1908, and also befriended many of the best writers of his time, including Henry James, H.G. Wells, Stephen Crane, John Galsworthy and Thomas Hardy. He is best known for his novels, especially The Fifth Queen (1906-8), The Good Soldier (1915) and Parade's End (1924-8). Ford served as an officer in the Welch Regiment 1915-19. After the war he moved to France. In Paris he founded the transatlantic review, taking on Ernest Hemingway as a sub-editor, discovering Jean Rhys and Basil Bunting, and publishing James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. In the 1920s and 1930s he moved between Paris, New York, and Provence. He died in Deauville in June 1939. The author of over eighty books, Ford is a major presence in twentieth-century writing. Paul Skinner took his first degree at the University of the West of England as a mature student, and later completed a Ph D on Ford Madox Ford and Ezra Pound at the University of Bristol. He has since taught at both universities, and published articles on Ford, Pound and Rudyard Kipling. His edition of Ford's No Enemy was published by Carcanet in 2002. In 2007 he edited Ford Madox Ford's Literary Contacts, volume 6 of International Ford Madox Ford Studies. He was a bookseller for many years and now works in publishing.