He had stood at the hall door, she looking out at him with a pitiful face. Then from the sofa within the brother had begun to snore; enormous, grotesque sounds... He had turned and walked down the path, she following him. He had exclaimed:

"It's perhaps too... untidy..."

She had said:

"Yes! Yes... Ugly... Too... oh... private!"

He said, he remembered:

"But... for ever..."

 She said, in a great hurry:

"But when you come back... Permanently. And... oh, as if it were in public." ... "I don't know," she had added. "Ought we?... I'd be ready..." She added: "I will be ready for anything you ask."

Some Do Not..., the first volume of Parade’s End, introduces the central characters: Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant mathematician; his dazzling, unfaithful wife Sylvia; and the young Suffragette Valentine Wannop. It starts with the cataclysmic weekend that throws Tietjens and Valentine together. It ends in 1917 as the two are on the verge of becoming lovers, before Tietjens prepares to return to the Front and probable death.

Some Do Not . . . is an unforgettable exploration of the tensions of a society facing catastrophe, as the energies of sexuality and power erupt into violence.

Some Do Not . . . includes:

• -- the first reliable text, based on the manuscript and first editions

• -- a major critical introduction by Max Saunders, Ford’s acclaimed biographer

• -- an account of the novel’s composition and reception

• -- a reconstruction of Ford’s dramatic original ending, published complete for the first time

• -- annotations explaining historical references, military terms, literary and topical allusions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 Ypres Salient at Night, 1918, IWM Art 1145. By permission of the Imperial War Museum. Cover design: StephenRaw.com

'Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End, arguably the most sophisticated British fiction to come out of that war. Carcanet’s reissue of the first volume, Some Do Not (£18.95), is the first reliable text, reconstructing Ford’s dramatic original ending. Brilliantly edited by Max Saunders and now to be filmed (scripted by Tom Stoppard), it deserves to be — and will be — better known.'
Alan Judd, Books of the Year 2010, The Spectator.

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
List of Short Titles
Introduction
A Note on this Edition of Parade’s End
A Note on the Text of Some Do Not ...

Some Do Not... A Novel

Textual Notes
Appendix: Reconstruction of the Original Ending
Select Bibliography