ABSTRACT
The rise of critical interest in Ford Madox Ford strongly correlates to the increased attention to history in literary scholarship. This chapter deals with Ford and his historical era—that is to say, the relationship between Ford’s texts and the historical contexts in which they were written—surveying the historically informed critical responses to Ford’s writings. It examines Ford’s historical novels and also deals with Ford as an historian and theorist of history. The chapter demonstrates many areas of scholarship have opened up due to the historical turn in modernist studies. Another genre dismissed by formalist criticism, but flourishing in a postmodern, postcolonial world, has been the historical novel. Long assumed to be a dead form during the modernist period, the genre’s role has been re-evaluated by critics in the early twentieth century. Historical fiction is often accused of escapism, and many critics see a regressive nostalgia at work.
