Provence: From Minstrels to the Machine

By Ford Madox Ford

A cross-genre evocation of a writer's life in the Mediterranean, this account documents the happy years Ford Madox Ford spent living in the South of France with his young artist lover, Biala.. Blending fiction, history, memoir, travel, and cookery writing, this tome charmingly evokes Ford and Biala's ramshackle, bohemian life in their villa on the Mediterranean coast. From social encounters with Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse to the delights of growing vegetables, this spontaneous and entertaining book is a true love letter to the Provençal lifestyle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.
• Release date: Jul 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781847776945

Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was an English novelist, poet, and editor. Born in Wimbledon, Ford was the son of Pre-Raphaelite artist Catherine Madox Brown and music critic Francis Hueffer. In 1894, he eloped with his girlfriend Elsie Martindale and eventually settled in Winchelsea, where they lived near Henry James and H. G. Wells. Ford left his wife and two daughters in 1909 for writer Isobel Violet Hunt, with whom he launched The English Review, an influential magazine that published such writers as Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound, and D. H. Lawrence. As Ford Madox Hueffer, he established himself with such novels as The Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903), cowritten with Joseph Conrad, and The Fifth Queen (1906-1907), a trilogy of historical novels. During the Great War, however, he began using the penname Ford Madox Ford to avoid anti-German sentiment. The Good Soldier (1915), considered by many to be Ford’s masterpiece, earned him a reputation as a leading novelist of his generation and continues to be named among the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Recognized as a pioneering modernist for his poem “Antwerp” (1915) and his tetralogy Parade’s End (1924-1928), Ford was a friend of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Jean Rhys. Despite his reputation and influence as an artist and publisher who promoted the early work of some of the greatest English and American writers of his time, Ford has been largely overshadowed by his contemporaries, some of whom took to disparaging him as their own reputations took flight.

Reviews for Provence

[seriousgrace · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Provence should be considered a travel book which follows the Great Trade Route "from China...to the Scilly Isles." Aside from that, Provence is Ford's love letter to the region. He and his travel companion will introduce you to the way to find good food in the south of France...even a good haircut.In truth, I found Provence a bit on the didactic side. Short of being downright boring I thought it was a slow read. In the end, I ended up not finishing it.Line that got to me the most, "But when the period of depression has been long and anxieties seem to be becoming too much for me, I make a bolt for Provence" (p 40). I get that. I'm like that about Monhegan.