HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.‘Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.’Just before the First World War, two young couples meet in Germany. The seemingly perfect yet brittle relationship of the Ashburnhams soon gives way to unhappiness and betrayal, and respectability to adultery and deception. The Dowells are no less affected by infidelity, and everyone caught up in their four lives is tainted by emotional turmoil and moral ambiguity, and tragic consequences follow.Inspired by his own life, Ford Madox Ford’s novel, originally titled ‘The Saddest Story’, utilised the device of the unreliable narrator to tell his universal story of love and loss.

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Collins Classics)

Biographies & Memoirs

Ford, Ford Madox

Leaders & Notable People

William Collins

"One of the finest novels of our century."  —Graham Greene The Good Soldier is a brilliant and heart-rending evocation of destructive passion. When John Dowell and his wife befriend Edward and Leonora Ashburnham they appear to be the perfect couple. He is a distinguished soldier and she is beautiful and intelligent. However, what lies beneath the surface of their marriage is far more sinister and their influence leads John into a tragic drama that threatens to destroy everything he cares about.

The Good Soldier (Vintage Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Vintage Classics

Christopher Tietjens has long loved the beautiful young suffragette Valentin, but the pair are held apart by Christopher's loyalty to his wife Sylvia, despite her callous infidelities, and to a set of principles which belong to an old world, and which are about to be swallowed up in the mud and chaos of the Western Front. This majestic four-part novel is one of the finest achievements of nineteenth century literature.

Parade's End

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Modern Classics)

Literary

Penguin Classic

Four wealthy and socially prominent individuals are forced to see each other realistically.

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

Penguin Classics

This tetralogy, widely regarded as one of the best novels in English, celebrates the end of an era, the irrevocable destruction of the comfortable, predictable society that vanished during World War I. "There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: 'Parade's End' is one of them." -W. H. Auden.

20th Century Parades End

Contemporary

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

United States

Penguin??Books

Ford Madox Ford’s novel about the doomed Katharine Howard, fifth queen of Henry VIII, is a neglected masterpiece. Kat Howard—intelligent, beautiful, naively outspoken, and passionately idealistic—catches the eye of Henry VIII and improbably becomes his fifth wife. A teenager who has grown up far from court, she is wholly unused to the corruption and intrigue that now surround her. It is a time of great upheaval, as unscrupulous courtiers maneuver for power while religious fanatics—both Protestant and Catholic—fight bitterly for their competing beliefs. Soon Katharine is drawn into a perilous showdown with Thomas Cromwell, the much-feared Lord Privy Seal, as her growing influence over the King begins to threaten too many powerful interests. Originally published in three parts (The Fifth Queen, Privy Seal, and The Fifth Queen Crowned), Ford’s novel serves up both a breathtakingly visual evocation of the Tudor world and a timeless portrayal of the insidious operations of power and fear in any era.

The Fifth Queen (Penguin Classics)

Arts & Photography

BYATT, A.S.

History & Criticism

Consisting of four novels - SOME DO NOT..., NO MORE PARADES, A MAN COULD STAND UP and THE LAST POST - PARADE'S END is the story of Christopher Tietjens and his progress from the secure world of Edwardian England into the First World War and beyond. Tietjens embodies the values of that ordered, predictable, hierarchic society of pre-1914. Contrasted with him and portrayed with equal clarity and depth is his wife Sylvia--beautiful, arrogant, reckless--a symbol of the new times. Their conflict, the chronicle of a family and of an era, makes PARADE'S END both a gripping study of character and a work of amazing subtlety and depth.

Modern Classics Parades End

Booker Prize-winner Julian Barnes introduces Ford Madox Ford's masterpiece Parade's End - now a major new BBC/HBO TV adaptation - in the reissued Penguin Modern Classics edition. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Christopher Tietjens, Rebecca Hall as his wife Sylvia and also featuring Rupert Everett, Carey Mulligan, Roger Allam and Miranda Richardson, this lavish production from a screenplay by the legendary playwright Tom Stoppard brings to life for the first time one of the twentieth century's most significant novels. A masterly novel of destruction and regeneration, Parade's End follows the story of aristocrat Christopher Tietjens as his world is shattered by the First World War. Tracing the psychological damage inflicted by battle, the collapse of England's secure Edwardian values - embodied in Christopher's wife, the beautiful, cruel socialite Sylvia - and the beginning of a new age, epitomized by the suffragette Valentine Wannop, Parade's End is an elegy for both the war dead and the passing of a way of life. Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) served with the British army in World War I, an experience that was to form the basis of his novel Parade's End, published in four parts from 1924 to 1928. He wrote over eighty books, including The Good Soldier (1915), and divided his time between England, France and America. Julian Barnes' most recent novel is The Sense of An Ending, for which he won the 2012 Man Booker prize. His other books include Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters and Arthur and George. 'The finest English novel about the Great War' Malcolm Bradbury 'The best novel by a British writer ... It is also the finest novel about the First World War. It is also the finest novel about the nature of British society' Anthony Burgess 'There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them' W.H. Auden 'The English prose masterpiece of the time' William Carlos Williams

Modern Classics: Parade's End (Penguin Modern Classics)

Classics

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