ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses transversal motifs and critical frameworks cutting across Ford Madox Ford’s writings on the English capital. It looks at his view of each city or town both in itself and as a lens through which other places can be imaginatively refracted. Since the mid-1990s The Soul of London has been recognised as one of Ford’s major endeavours and a significant contribution to urban literature. Ford probes the hidden forces that shape London at a time of dramatic social change. Ford’s narrative engagement with London continues beyond the Edwardian decade. In Ford’s recognition of emphasis fragmentation and multiplicity, there is the ‘immense joy’ of the ‘lover of universal life’ who bathes in the ‘kaleidoscope’ of urban spaces. Ford revelled in ordinary urban experience and often disregarded distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow.
