The Edwardian Ford Madox Ford: Culture, Politics, and Gender

An International Conference organised in association with the Ford Madox Ford Society

The University of Glasgow, 6-8 September 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) made a major contribution to the literature and culture of the Edwardian era as a novelist, poet, editor, and critic. While much scholarship has focused on Ford's collaboration with Conrad, his success as a writer of historical fiction, and the founding and editing of the groundbreaking English Review during these years, there remains much exciting work to be done on this period of Ford's life and work.

Proposals for papers are invited for an international conference focusing on Ford's writing between 1901 and 1914, including his novels and stories, non-fictional prose, criticism, poetry, and letters. Papers comparing Ford to his Edwardian contemporaries are especially welcome, including (but not limited to) Max Beerbohm, Hilaire Belloc, Arnold Bennett, G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan-Doyle, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, John Galsworthy, Constance Garnett, Elinor Glyn, Edmund Gosse, Violet Hunt, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Compton Mackenzie, Katherine Mansfield, George Moore, E. Nesbit, Stephen Reynolds, May Sinclair, H. G. Wells, and Israel Zangwill.

The conference aims to reflect the diversity of Ford's work during the Edwardian years by engaging with a wide range of the themes and issues that preoccupy his writing, such as: Suffragettes; Social Change; Technology, Communication and Media; Music Hall; Fantasy; Class; Politics; Money. The main focus will be on Ford's work written in or about the (long) Edwardian period: primarily the following books, but also including his writing for periodicals:

• The Inheritors, with Joseph Conrad (1901)
• Rossetti (1902)
• Romance, with Joseph Conrad (1903)
• The Soul of London (1905)
• The Benefactor (1905)
• Hans Holbein (1905)
• The Fifth Queen (1906)
• *The Heart of the Country (1906)
• Christina's Fairy Book (1906)
• Privy Seal (1907)
• An English Girl (1907)
• The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1907)
• *The Spirit of the People (1907)
• The Fifth Queen Crowned (1908)
• *Mr. Apollo (1908)
• *The 'Half-Moon' (1909)
• *A Call (1910)
• The Portrait (1910)
• *The Simple Life Limited, [pseudonym: Daniel Chaucer] (1911)
• Ancient Lights (1911); also published as Memories and Impressions (1911)
• *Ladies Whose Bright Eyes (1911; revised version, 1935)
• *The Critical Attitude (1911)
• *The Panel (1912); published in USA as Ring for Nancy (1913)
• *The New Humpty-Dumpty, [pseudonym: Daniel Chaucer] (1912)
• *This Monstrous Regiment of Women (1913)
• *Mr. Fleight (1913)
• The Desirable Alien, with Violet Hunt (1913)
• *The Young Lovell (1913)
• Henry James (1913)
• *Collected Poems (1913)

We would be especially keen to receive proposals (from graduate students as well as established scholars) focusing on any of the texts asterisked here (some of which have had little work done on them), although discussion of Ford's later writing about the Edwardian period – whether in novels like The Good Soldier or Parade's End, or memoirs like Return to Yesterday – is also welcome.

Proposals of around 300 words should be sent to fmf2011@glasgow.ac.uk by 1 April 2011.

For more information please visit:
http://fordmadoxford-conference.weebly.com/