Ford Madox Ford and the regiment of women: Violet Hunt, Jean Rhys, Stella Bowen, Janice Biala

Abstract

Engaging and energetic, this biography of Ford Madox Ford presents the modernist writer in a previously unexplored way. Other biographies have approached Ford as an author; indeed, his memoirs give almost no indication that the women in his life were of any importance or, in fact, that they ever existed. Literary scholar Joseph Wiesenfarth revises this approach by tracing Ford's relationships with four women central to his life. Wiesenfarth shows how these women - Violet Hunt, Jean Rhys, Stella Bowen, and Janice Biala - established themselves as artists in their own right and depicted Ford in their works as different than the proper man he thought himself to be. For the women, he was both a lover and a leaver, a collaborator and a companion. Wiesenfarth examines the artistic and romantic interplay among these writers, painters, and lovers. This book features a beautifully illustrated color and black-and-white gallery of Bowen and Biala paintings.