All Formats & Editions

Originally titled "The Saddest Story" and heralded by Graham Greene as "one of the finest novels of our century," Ford's 1915 tale of passion and deceit in the lives of two married couples is a modernist masterpiece. The Norton Critical Edition of The Good Soldier allows the... Read Full Overview

With an Introduction and Notes by Sara Haslam, Department of English, The Open University.

The Good Soldier is a masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction, an inspiration for many later, distinguished writers, including Graham Greene. Set before the... Read Full Overview

"Backgrounds and Contexts" brings together important appraisals of the work directly following its publication. Reactions from Rebecca West and Theodore Dreiser are included among the reviews. The section also collects critiques on literary impressionism, including one by Ford,... Read Full Overview

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... Read Full Overview

The Good Soldier is Ford Madox Ford's masterpiece, a riveting story and one of the most compelling examples of early Modernism: a virtuoso performance of how to use an "unreliable narrator." Wealthy American John Dowell tells what he calls "the saddest story," about a secret... Read Full Overview

The Good Soldier tells the stories of two outwardly happy couples who meet at a health spa in Germany just before the start of the First World War, and whose loveless, adultery-ridden relationships are strained and gradually disintegrate, with tragic consequences. Drawing inspiration... Read Full Overview

Ford Madox Ford's extraordinary novel of passion and betrayal, The Good Soldier , is edited with an introduction by David Bradshaw in Penguin Classics. The Dowells, a wealthy American couple, have been close friends with the Ashburnhams for years. Edward Ashburnham, a first-rate... Read Full Overview

This anthology is a thorough introduction to classic literature for those who have not yet experienced these literary masterworks. For those who have known and loved these works in the past, this is an invitation to reunite with old friends in a fresh new format. From Shakespeare's... Read Full Overview

The Good Soldier (1915) is a novel by Ford Madox Ford. Set just before the First World War, the novel is superficially the story of Edward Asburnham, a man with a reputation for philandering. Considered an important proto-modernist novel, The Good Soldier employs... Read Full Overview

First published in 1915, "The Good Soldier" is Ford Madox Ford's tragic tale of the relationship between two couples. The first couple is English, Captain Edward Ashburnham, the good soldier referenced in the title, and his wife Leonora. The two at first have a seemingly perfect... Read Full Overview

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is a 1915 novel by English novelist Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends... Read Full Overview

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is a 1915 novel by English novelist Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his seemingly perfect marriage plus that of his two American friends... Read Full Overview

Set just before World War I, The Good Soldier chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two seemingly perfect couples. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks, it also makes use of the device of the unreliable narrator as the main character gradually reveals a version of... Read Full Overview

Leonora and Edward Ashburnham were "good people" from England, as John Dowell, the narrator of this tale, explains: and Dowell and his wife, Florence -- leisured Americans of solid stock -- were, like their English friends, a "model couple."
For a dozen years, the foursome... Read Full Overview