b. Hueffer. (1873-1939). Writer, from Kent. His father was a German musician; his grandfather was a pre-Raphaelite painter. Ford was a Catholic, and an officer in the Welsh regiment in WW1. He had a breakdown six months out and moved to Paris. He wrote four novels during and after the war. In the 30's he taught at a Michigan college, and died during his return to France.

Ford was influenced by French novelists, viz. Flaubert, and believed in truth of impression (if it didn't happen, it should have). He had the cojones to write the first major impressionistic novel following Joseph Conrad's style, mainly owing to his certainty that he would soon die. This was The Good Soldier, which was completed by September of 1914 and was published in 1915. It's a magnificent, bitter book about deception, filial love, and an adulterous affair.

Ford met Conrad through Edward Garnett, a reader and backer of modernist writers. Ford and Conrad probably didn't get along well, but they helped each other. Ford collaborated with Conrad on Nostromo and The Mirror of the Sea in the winter of 1904; in the late spring of that same year, Ford suffered a severe mental breakdown.

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