Because she was the only soul in the world with whom he could talk... They had that same sort of good, bread-and-butter brains; without much of the romantic... No doubt a touch...in him. Otherwise he would not always have been in these muddles. He gave all he possessed to anyone who asked for it. That was alright. But that those sponged on him should also involve him in intolerable messes... That was not proper. One ought to defend oneself against that!

Because... If you do not defend yourself against that, look how you let in your nearest and dearest - those who have to sympathise with you in your confounded troubles whilst yo moon on, giving away more and more and getting into more troubles! In this case it was she who was his nearest and dearest... Or had been!

A Man Could Stand Up –, the third volume of Parade’s End, brings Ford’s characters to the ‘crack across the table of History’, across which lie their uncertain post-war futures. Divided into three parts, the novel is a kaleidoscopic vision of society at a climactic moment. The Armistice Day fireworks heard by Valentine Wannop in London with which the novel opens are echoed in the nightmare bombardment of the second part, as we are taken back to the war and Christopher Tietjens, staggering through the mud of No Man’s Land with a wounded soldier in his arms. The final section returns to Armistice Day and joins the two characters in a frenetic dance, while Tietjens’ wartime comrades smash glasses drunkenly around them.

For the first time, the four novels that make up Ford Madox Ford’s First World War masterpiece Parade’s End are published in fully annotated editions, with authoritative corrected texts. Each novel is edited by a leading Ford expert.

A Man Could Stand Up – includes
-- the first reliable text, based on the hand-corrected typescript and first editions
-- a major critical introduction by Sara Haslam, Senior Lecturer in Literature at the Open University and author of Fragmenting Modernism: Ford Madox Ford, the Novel and the Great War
-- an account of the novel’s composition and reception
-- annotations explaining historical references, military terms, literary and topical allusions
-- a full textual apparatus including transcriptions of significant deletions and revisions
-- a bibliography of further reading

Cover painting: Paul Nash, The Menin Road,1919, IWM Art 2242 (detail). By permission of the Imperial War Museum. Cover design StephenRaw.com

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
List of Short Titles

Introduction
A Note on this Edition of Parade’s End
A Note on the Text of A Man Could Stand Up –

A Man Could Stand Up –: A Novel

Textual Notes
Select Bibliography