Historical Fiction Ford, Ford Madox: Parade's End (Tetralogy). V2. 27 Mar 2014

[GeorgeH]

Parade's End (Tetralogy)
by Ford Madox Ford (1924 thru 1928)

Ford Madox Ford (17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939), born Ford Hermann Hueffer was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature. He is now best remembered for The Good Soldier (1915), the Parade's End tetralogy (1924–28) and The Fifth Queen trilogy (1906–08).

Parade's End was published in four parts between 1924 and 1928. This extraordinary tetralogy centers on Christopher Tietjens, an officer and a gentleman—“the last English Tory”—and follows him from the secure, orderly world of Edwardian England into the chaotic madness of the First World War. Against the backdrop of a world at war, Ford recounts the complex sexual warfare between Tietjens and his faithless wife, Sylvia.

The books:
Some Do Not
No More Parades
A Man Could Stand Up
The Last Post

Notes:
I originally uploaded the first three books as three separate files a couple of months ago. Since then I've obtained a copy of the fourth book, The Last Post, and decided to compile a single ebook containing all four books of this tetralogy. To avoid confusion I deleted the other epub/mobi versions.

Some improvements (hopefully) have been made during the proofing process, including the addition of 'curly' double quotes, ellipses (precomposed glyphs), em-dashes and a TOC. Various typos were corrected along the way.

Update 23 Mar 2014:

I had misplaced the source files for this ebook quite some time ago and was unable to incorporate the corrections given to me by Guildenstern, a fellow mobileread member. As is usual with these things, it was cleverly hidden exactly where I saved it.

This version includes 70+ typographic corrections and sports a new book cover. Due to uncertain copyright I also removed the book covers that were included within the ebook itself.

For the most part the changes are minor but do make for a better reading experience since typos tend to stick out and distract from the flow. My grateful thanks to Guildenstern for his thorough review of the original ebook and for all the suggestions he made!

(Prev DLs: 570)

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[Araucaria]

George - I've really enjoyed reading these books, but I've a question perhaps only you can answer.

The word "cokebrize" appears in several places (eg in "A Man Could Stand Up", towards the end of section I of Part II), but it's not in my biggish dictionary and google returns no proper hits for it. Is it a transcription error?

I don't have a print version to refer to, or a scan.

Thanks very much for your good work.

[GeorgeH]

Hi Araucaria.

I believe cokebreze is an alternative spelling for coke breeze. One definition is:

"Coke breeze (metallurgy) is the undersized screenings of coke (usually less than 10 mm).

"During coke production the screening operation is where pieces and dust too small for steel making are removed. Coke breeze is either reused on site (e.g. in the sinter plant) or sold off site as a by-product. Coke breeze can used as the basis of a building material (e.g. "breeze blocks" or "cinder blocks") or used as an industrial boiler fuel."

Thanks for your kind words.

Originally Posted by Araucaria

George - I've really enjoyed reading these books, but I've a question perhaps only you can answer.

The word "cokebrize" appears in several places (eg in "A Man Could Stand Up", towards the end of section I of Part II), but it's not in my biggish dictionary and google returns no proper hits for it. Is it a transcription error?

I don't have a print version to refer to, or a scan.

Thanks very much for your good work.

[Araucaria]

George - could be..... but it wouldn't fit the sense very well:

"She sprang off the bench; she clenched her nails into her palms; she stamped her thin-soled shoes into the coke-brize floor that was singularly unresilient."
[in this passage Valentine is sitting "on a varnished pitch-pine bench that had black iron-clamped legs against the plaster wall, non-conformistically distempered in torpedo grey"]

and

"Of course, our legislators with the stewed-pear brains running about the ignoble corridors with cokebrize floors and mahogany doors…might be impressed."

and

"The cook-house was like a cathedral's nave, aisles being divided off by the pipes of stoves. The floor was of coke-brize shining under french polish and turpentine."

I'd accept what we called breeze (as in breeze blocks) for a running track surface, or a park pathway, but these scenes are set indoors, in a girls public school in, presumably, Whitehall and in an army camp. But if "cokebrize" is what it says in the original text, it's what it says. Maybe Ford was himself unaware of what the stuff was?

Anyway, thanks again!

[GeorgeH]

Looking into it further I found, via Google, that there was a type of flooring called the Fox & Barrett system that used light weight breeze concrete as filler between joists. It was in use during that time period and may be what Ford was referring to. One reference (PDF) is here:

http://mileslewis.net/australian-bui...-fireproof.pdf

Originally Posted by Araucaria

George - could be..... but it wouldn't fit the sense very well:

"She sprang off the bench; she clenched her nails into her palms; she stamped her thin-soled shoes into the coke-brize floor that was singularly unresilient."
[in this passage Valentine is sitting "on a varnished pitch-pine bench that had black iron-clamped legs against the plaster wall, non-conformistically distempered in torpedo grey"]

and

"Of course, our legislators with the stewed-pear brains running about the ignoble corridors with cokebrize floors and mahogany doors…might be impressed."

and

"The cook-house was like a cathedral's nave, aisles being divided off by the pipes of stoves. The floor was of coke-brize shining under french polish and turpentine."

I'd accept what we called breeze (as in breeze blocks) for a running track surface, or a park pathway, but these scenes are set indoors, in a girls public school in, presumably, Whitehall and in an army camp. But if "cokebrize" is what it says in the original text, it's what it says. Maybe Ford was himself unaware of what the stuff was?

Anyway, thanks again!

[Araucaria]

George - I think that's it.

The key point of a floor like that was that it was fireproof - your link refers to lunatic asylums, as well as government buildings, which I am sure would have appealed to Ford. That (over-informative) link mentions that the concrete isn't necessarily visible, as there would usually be a wooden floor on top.

So it would be ideal for a cook-house. It would certainly fit with Valentine finding the floor "unresilient".

And girls' public schools are presumably eiusdem generis with lunatic asylums and government offices.

[GeorgeH]

Version 2 has been uploaded. It includes 70+ typographic corrections, a new book cover and a reworked TOC. Many thanks to Guildenstern for reviewing the original upload and identifying all the errors I had made, it is truly appreciated!