Issued by the Poetry Bookshop, c.1915, a copy of Ford Madox Ford’s Antwerp, a poem inspired by Belgian resistance to Germany’s demand that its troops be allowed passage through their country to enter France, realised £900 in the Adam Partridge sale. The cover design was the work of Wyndham Lewis.
Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) – whose full name was Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer – was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor. His journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review were highly influential in the development of early 20th-century English and US literature.
Best sellers
The most expensive of the many works of his on offer in this auction on August 3-5, at £3000, was the tetralogy of 1924-28 that comprises Parade’s End, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up and, appropriately enough, Last Post of 1928.
All retained their dust jackets and the first three were first edition copies, with No More Parades additionally inscribed by the author.
Another 1925 first of that last mentioned work, inscribed by its author on the front free endpaper, “…The adjutant saying ‘there will be no more Parades’, and... There damn well wont &... No more hope; no more glory; no more parades for you & me anymore...”, sold at £1700.
Signed by the author, one of just 35 full vellum bound copies of Ford Madox Ford’s The Queen Who Flew of 1894 showed some foxing, toning and slight damp-staining internally, but it sold online at £1500 in Macclesfield.
Lotted together and sold at £1800 were a 1900 first of Poems for Pictures inscribed for Mr & Mrs Martindale from “Their unworthy son in law The Author…”, and a copy of The Face of the Night bearing an ink dedication to an unidentified recipient, one H Martindale.
One Madox Ford work that lacked any autograph additions but sold for a much higher than expected £720, on an estimate of just £50-80, was a 1923 first in dust jacket of The Marsden Case.
