Ford Madox Ford, The Simple Life Limited

Nathan Waddell (University of Birmingham)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Newman University), Louise McDonald (Newman University)

Dates

First circulation or publication Feb 1911

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
Satire
Utopian / Dystopian

Resources

The Simple Life Limited (1911) is one of two satirical novels written by Ford under the pseudonym “Daniel Chaucer”. The other is The New Humpty Dumpty (1912). Both these texts offer penetrating insights into the nature of social engineering and the dangers of utopian thinking, and both reflect Ford's troubled mindset in the years following his departure as editor from The English Review. In particular, The Simple Life Limited explores the politics behind the ideal of the Simple Life that had grown out of a complex amalgam of the thought and writings of Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Ruskin, Henry David Thoreau, William Morris, and Walt Whitman. Given credence by the nineteenth-century …

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1317 words

Citation: Waddell, Nathan. "The Simple Life Limited". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 November 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=28508, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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