The Good Soldier

We rely on your support to help us keep producing beautiful, free, and unrestricted editions of literature for the digital age. Will you support our efforts with a donation ? At the height of belle époque Europe, an American couple—the narrator John Dowell and his wife Florence–and a British couple–Leonora and the titular "good soldier" Edward Ashburnham—meet and become firm friends. Travelling and socialising together, it's a full nine years before the cracks start to show, but when they do the whole edifice starts tumbling to reveal the secrecy and lies concealed within. The Good Soldier is a classic example of the unreliable narrator genre. With a charitable view, everything John Dowell retells is plausible, but it doesn't take much critical thinking to reframe the story's events as something entirely more sinister. The novel is now frequently ranked by critics as one of the great pieces of twentieth-century literature. Ford Madox Ford , already published many times over by this novel's release, and along with collaborations with both Joseph Conrad and Ernest Hemingway , went on to create and edit the influential literature journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review . Ford Madox Ford (died 1939) was a major literary figure of the early 20th century. Their work has endured across generations and continues to be read and studied worldwide. As a work of classic literary fiction, The Good Soldier exemplifies the narrative craft and social insight that defined great storytelling of its era. Literary fiction of this period was characterized by careful attention to character psychology, social milieu, and the moral questions that animated public discourse.