The Good Soldier. A Tale of Passion.

HUEFFER, [Ford] Ford Madox.

$2,800.00

Item Number: 142068

London: John Lane Company, 1915.

First edition, first issue without the 16 pp. of advertisements of this literary highspot, one of the great novels of the first half of the twentieth century. Octavo, original cloth. In near fine condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. An exceptional presentation.

Set just before World War I, the novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, through a rather unreliable narrator; for as it turns out, the story is not what we are led to believe at the beginning. The novel’s original title was “The Saddest Story”, from the novels opening lines “This is the saddest story I have ever heard”; however, with the onset of World War I, the publishers asked Ford for a new title, to which he sarcastically suggested “The Good Soldier”, and so it was named. It was named by Modern Library as one of the 100 Greatest Novels novels of the twentieth century. In 2015, the BBC ranked The Good Soldier 13th on its list of the 100 greatest British novels.