Editing Parade's End

{{Short description|Tetralogy of novels by Ford Madox Ford}}
{{About |the Ford Madox Ford novels |the 2012 TV adaptation |Parade's End (TV series) |the 1964 TV adaptation |Theatre 625#List of episodes}}
{{use British English|date=June 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2023}}
{{Infobox book
| name           = Parade's End
| image          = Parade's End.jpg
| author         = [[Ford Madox Ford]]
| caption        = First complete edition cover (1950)  
| country        = United Kingdom
| language       = English
| genre          = [[Historical fiction]], [[literary modernism|modernist novel]]
| publisher      = 
| release_date   = 1924–1928
}}

'''''Parade's End''''' is a [[tetralogy]] of novels by the British novelist and poet [[Ford Madox Ford]], first published from 1924 to 1928. The novels chronicle the life of a member of the English [[gentry]] before, during and after World War I. The setting is mainly England and the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]] of the [[World War I|First World War]], in which Ford had served as an officer in the [[Welch Regiment]], a life he vividly depicts. The individual novels are ''[[Some Do Not ...]]'' (1924), ''[[No More Parades (novel)|No More Parades]]'' (1925), ''[[A Man Could Stand Up&nbsp;—]]'' (1926) and ''[[Last Post (novel)|Last Post]]'' (1928).

The work is a complex tale written in a [[Modernism|modernist]] style and does not concentrate on detailing the experience of war.<ref>{{cite news |last=Barnes |first=Julian |date=24 August 2012 |title=A tribute to Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/24/julian-barnes-parades-end-ford-madox-ford |newspaper=The Guardian |location=England |access-date=29 June 2014}}</ref> [[Robie Macauley]], in his introduction to the Borzoi edition of 1950, described it as "by no means a simple warning as to what modern warfare is like... [but] something complex and baffling [to many contemporary readers]. There was a love story with no passionate scenes; there were trenches but no battles; there was a tragedy without a denouement."<ref>{{cite news|last=Macauley|first=Robie|title=Introduction |work=Parade's End|date= 1950 |edition=Borzoi |page=vi|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf}}</ref> The novel is about the psychological result of the war on the participants and on society. In his introduction to the third novel, ''A Man Could Stand Up--'', Ford wrote, "This is what the late war was like: this is how modern fighting of the organized, scientific type affects the mind".<ref>{{cite news|author=Macauley, Robie |work=Parade's End|title= Introduction|page=vi|year=1950|edition=Borzoi|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf}} Robie Macauley includes Ford's quote to an earlier edition of ''A Man Could Stand Up--'' in his introduction.</ref> In December 2010, [[John N. Gray]] hailed the work as "possibly the greatest 20th-century novel in English", and [[Mary Gordon (writer)|Mary Gordon]] labelled it as "quite simply, the best fictional treatment of war in the history of the novel".<ref>{{cite news|author=Gray, John|url=http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2010/12/resolution-ford-short-john |title=John Gray's New Year's Resolution |work=New Statesman |access-date=18 September 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Gordon|first=Mary|title=Book Reviews: ''Parade's End'' by Ford Madox Ford|journal=Style|year=2012|volume=46|issue=1|pages=112–115|url=http://www.engl.niu.edu/ojs/index.php/style/article/viewFile/238/173|access-date=26 February 2013|author-link=Mary Gordon (writer)}}{{dead link|date=March 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

== Background ==
Ford stated that his purpose in creating this work was "the obviating of all future wars".<ref>{{cite book|last=Meixner|first=John|title= Ford Madox Ford's Novels|year=1962|page=213|publisher=U of Minnesota Press |isbn=978-1-4529-1002-4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zJ4zVpGbAskC&q=%22the+obviating+of+all+future+wars&pg=PA213|access-date=4 June 2013|author-link=David A Meixner (writer)}}</ref> The four novels were originally published under the titles: ''[[Some Do Not …|Some Do Not ...]]'' (1924), ''[[No More Parades (novel)|No More Parades]]'' (1925), ''[[A Man Could Stand Up&nbsp;—]]'' (1926) and ''[[Last Post (novel)|Last Post]]'' (''The Last Post'' in the USA) (1928); the books were combined into one volume as ''Parade's End'' in 1950.<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/topic/Parades-End Parade's End | novels by Ford | Britannica]</ref> In 2012, [[HBO]], [[BBC]] and [[Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie|VRT]] produced a [[Parade's End (TV series)|television adaptation]], written by [[Tom Stoppard]] and starring [[Benedict Cumberbatch]] and [[Rebecca Hall]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Parade's End|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01m7rn8/|publisher=BBC|access-date=24 August 2012}}</ref>

== Plot summary ==
The novels chronicle the life of Christopher Tietjens, "the last [[Tory]]", a brilliant government statistician from a wealthy landowning family who serves in the British Army during the [[World War I|First World War]]. His wife Sylvia is a flippant socialite who seems intent on ruining him through her sexual promiscuity. Tietjens may or may not be the father of his wife's child. Meanwhile, his incipient affair with Valentine Wannop, a high-spirited [[pacifism|pacifist]] and [[women's suffrage|women's suffragist]], has not been consummated, despite what all their friends believe.

The two central novels follow Tietjens in the army in France and Belgium, as well as Sylvia and Valentine in their separate paths over the course of the war.

== Literary notes ==
Notably among [[war novel]]s, Tietjens' consciousness takes primacy over the war-events it filters. Ford constructs a protagonist for whom the war is but one layer of his life, and not always even the most prominent even though he is in the middle of it. In a narrative beginning before the war and ending after the armistice, Ford's project is to situate an unimaginable cataclysm within a social, moral, and psychological complexity.

[[Robie Macauley]] wrote that "the Tietjens story...is less about the incident of a single war than about a whole era" and its destruction. "Ford took as the scheme for his allegory the life of one man, Christopher Tietjens, a member of an extinct species, which, as he says, 'died out sometime in the 18th century.' Representing in himself the order and stability of another age, he must experience the disruptive present."<ref>{{cite news|last=Macauley|first=Robie|title= Introduction | work=Parade's End| edition=  Borzoi|date=1950 |pages=vi, ix|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf}}</ref>

The work is also striking in its investigation of the relationship among gender dynamics, war, and societal upheaval. Scholar David Ayers notes that "''Parade's End'' is virtually alone of the male writing of the 1920s in affirming the ascendance of women and advocating a course of graceful withdrawal from dominance for men".<ref>{{cite book| last=Ayers|first=David|title=English Literature of the 1920s|page=19|via= Google Books| publisher= Edinburgh University Press| year= 1999| isbn=  978-0-7486-0985-7| url= https://books.google.com/books?id=NvlZAAAAMAAJ&q=virtually|author-link=David Ayers (writer)}}</ref>

== Textual history ==
Penguin reissued the four novels separately in 1948, just after the [[Second World War]].{{citation needed|date=July 2019}}

The novels were first combined into one volume under the collective title ''Parade's End'' (which had been suggested by Ford,{{citation needed|date=July 2019}} although he did not live to see an omnibus version) in the Knopf edition of 1950, which has been the basis of several subsequent reissues.<ref>{{cite book|title=Parade's End|url=https://archive.org/details/paradesend00ford|url-access=registration|author=Ford, Ford Madox|edition=Borzoi|date=1950|publisher=Knopf}}</ref>

[[Graham Greene]] controversially omitted ''Last Post'' from his 1963 Bodley Head edition of Ford's writing, calling<ref>{{cite book| title= The Bodley Head Ford Madox Ford| publisher= [[The Bodley Head]]| first= Ford Madox| last= Ford| series= Volume 3 |year= 1963| chapter= Introduction}}</ref> it "an afterthought which he (Ford) had not intended to write and later regretted having written." Greene went on to state that "...the ''Last Post'' was more than a mistake—it was a disaster, a disaster which has delayed a full critical appreciation of ''Parade's End''." Certainly ''Last Post'' is very different from the other three novels; it is concerned with peace and reconstruction, and Christopher Tietjens is absent for most of the narrative, which is structured as a series of interior monologues by those closest to him. Yet it has had influential admirers, from [[Dorothy Parker]] and [[Carl Clinton Van Doren]] to [[Anthony Burgess]] and [[Malcolm Bradbury]] (who included it in his 1992 Everyman edition).

Carcanet Press published the first annotated and critical edition of the novels, edited by Max Saunders, Joseph Wiesenfarth, Sara Haslam, and Paul Skinner, in 2010–11.<ref>{{cite book| url=http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847770127 |publisher=Carcanet Press|title=Parade's End: Volume I |author=Ford, Ford Madox |editor=Saunders, Max |editor2=Wiesenfarth, Joseph |editor3=Sara Haslam |editor4=Skinner, Paul |date= 2010–2011|access-date= 18 September 2012}}</ref>

== Adaptations ==
* ''[[Theatre 625]]: Parade's End'' (1964), three-part BBC videotaped serial<!-- Warner's are solely the co-distributors of the Region 1 DVDs in the US. --> with [[Ronald Hines]] and [[Judi Dench]].<ref>{{cite AV media |date=1964 |medium=DVD |title=Theatre 625: Parades End |publisher= BBC Warner}}</ref>
* ''[[Parade's End (TV series)|Parade's End]]'' (2012), five-part BBC/HBO television serial) by [[Susanna White]], script by [[Tom Stoppard]], starring [[Benedict Cumberbatch]] and [[Rebecca Hall]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323478004578306400682079518 |title=TV's Novel Challenge: Literature on the Screen |work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |author=Alter, Alexandra |date= 21 February 2013 |access-date=27 February 2013}}</ref>

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== Further reading ==
For further discussions of the novels comprising ''Parade's End'' see for example:

*Auden, W. H., "Il faut payer", ''Mid-Century'', no. 22 (Feb. 1961), 3–10.
*Bergonzi, Bernard, ''Heroes' Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War'', third edition (Manchester: Carcanet: 1996).
*Bradbury, Malcolm, "Introduction", ''Parade's End'' (London: Everyman's Library, 1992).
*Brown, Dennis, "Remains of the Day: Tietjens the Englishman", in ''Ford Madox Ford's Modernity'', International Ford Madox Ford Studies, no. 2, ed. Robert Hampson and Max Saunders (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA.: Rodopi, 2003), 161–74.
*Calderaro, Michela A., ''A Silent New World: Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End'' (Bologna. Editrice CLUEB [Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria, Editrice Bologna], 1993).
*Cassell, Richard A., ''Ford Madox Ford: A Study of His Novels'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962).
*Colombino, Laura, ''Ford Madox Ford: Vision, Visuality and Writing'' (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008).
*Gordon, Ambrose, Jr, ''The Invisible Tent: The War Novels of Ford Madox Ford'' (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1964).
*Gasiorek, Andrzej, "The Politics of Cultural Nostalgia: History and Tradition in Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End", ''Literature & History'', 11:2 (third series) (Autumn 2002), 52–77
*Green, Robert, ''Ford Madox Ford: Prose and Politics'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
*Haslam, Sara, ''Fragmenting Modernism: Ford Madox Ford, the Novel, and the Great War'' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002).
*Hawkes, Rob, ''Ford Madox Ford and the Misfit Moderns: Edwardian Fiction and the First World War'' (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
*Hein, David. [https://newcriterion.com/issues/2021/11/goodbye-to-all-that "Goodbye to All That: On Ford Madox Ford's ''Parade's End''."] ''The New Criterion'' 40, no. 3 (November 2021): 24–29.
*Judd, Alan, ''Ford Madox Ford'' (London: Collins, 1990)
*Meixner, John A., ''Ford Madox Ford's Novels: A Critical Study'' (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1962).
*Moser, Thomas C., ''The Life in the Fiction of Ford Madox Ford'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
*Saunders, Max, ''Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life'', 2 volumes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), II.
*Seiden, Melvin, "Persecution and Paranoia in Parade's End", ''Criticism'', 8:3 (Summer 1966), 246–62.
*Skinner, Paul, "The Painful Processes of Reconstruction: History in "No Enemy" and "Last Post", in ''History and Representation in Ford Madox Ford's Writings'', ed. Joseph Wiesenfarth, International Ford Madox Ford *Studies, no. 3 (Rodopi: Amsterdam and New York: 2004), 65–75.
*Tate, Trudi, ''Modernism, History and the First World War'' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998).
*Wiesenfarth, Joseph, ''Gothic Manners and the Classic English Novel'' (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).
*Wiley, Paul L., ''Novelist of Three Worlds: Ford Madox Ford'' (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1962).

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[[Category:British novels adapted into films]]
[[Category:English novels]]
[[Category:Modernist novels]]
[[Category:Novel sequences]]
[[Category:Novels by Ford Madox Ford]]
[[Category:Novels set in Belgium]]
[[Category:Novels set in England]]
[[Category:Novels set in France]]
[[Category:Novels set during World War I]]