DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Privy Seal: His Last Venture" by Ford Madox Ford. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
This early work by Ford Madox Ford was originally published in 1907 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. Ford Madox Ford was born Ford Madox Hueffer in Merton, Surrey, England on 17th December 1873. The creative arts ran in his family - Hueffer's grandfather, Ford Madox Brown, was a well-known painter, and his German émigré father was music critic of The Times - and after a brief dalliance with music composition, the young Hueffer began to write. Although Hueffer never attended university, during his early twenties he moved through many intellectual circles, and would later talk of the influence that the "Middle Victorian, tumultuously bearded Great" - men such as John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle - exerted on him. In 1908, Hueffer founded the English Review, and over the next 15 months published Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, John Galsworthy and W. B. Yeats, and gave débuts to many authors, including D. H. Lawrence and Norman Douglas. Hueffer's editorship consolidated the classic canon of early modernist literature, and saw him earn a reputation as of one of the century's greatest literary editors. Ford's most famous work was his Parade's End tetralogy, which he completed in the 1920's and have now been adapted into a BBC television drama. Ford continued to write through the thirties, producing fiction, non-fiction, and two volumes of autobiography: Return to Yesterday (1931) and It was the Nightingale (1933). In his last years, he taught literature at the Olivet College in Michigan. Ford died on 26th June 1939 in Deauville, France, at the age of 65.
Now back in print, Ford's highly acclaimed portrait of Henry VIII's controversial fifth Queen This masterful performance of historical fiction centers on Katharine Howard--clever, beautiful, and outspoken--who catches the jaded eye of Henry VIII and becomes his fifth Queen. Corruption and fear pervade the King's court, and the dimly lit corridors vibrate with the intrigues of unscrupulous courtiers hungry for power. Soon Katharine is locked in a vicious battle with Thomas Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal, as she fights for political and religious change. Ford saw the past as an integral part of the present experience and understanding, and his sharply etched vision of the court of Henry VIII--first published in 1908--echoes aspects of Edwardian England as it explores the pervading influence of power, lies, fear, and anxiety on people's lives. "The Fifth Queen is a magnificent bravura piece." --Graham Greene "The best historical romance of this century." --The Times Literary Supplement "A noble conception--the swan song of historical romance." --Joseph Conrad
The Fifth Queen (1906-1908) is a trilogy of novels by Ford Madox Ford. Set during the reign of Henry VIII, Ford’s trilogy recreates Tudor England in a masterful story of court intrigue, romance, and betrayal. Focusing on the tragic figure of Katharine Howard, the fifth wife of the King, Ford investigates the interconnection of sex and power in a political atmosphere clouded by violence and espionage. Depicting some of the era’s most notorious figures, including Thomas Cromwell, Bloody Mary, and the King himself, Ford makes history both entertaining and undeniably human. Brought to the court of King Henry VIII by her cousin Thomas Culpeper, Katharine Howard, a noblewoman whose family’s fortunes had been in decline for some time, inadvertently catches the eye of his majesty. Given a position as a lady in waiting for Lady Mary, Howard—though opposed by the brutally efficient schemer Thomas Cromwell—soon distinguishes herself in the eyes of the King, who makes her his fifth Queen. Thrust into the spotlight at the age of seventeen, she finds herself forced into an impossible role as a public figure whose every move could enrage her notoriously violent husband. Married to the Henry for a brief time before she was unceremoniously divorced and beheaded, Howard has traditionally been seen as a minor figure in the history of Tudor England. For Ford, however, a master storyteller with an eye for tragedy and a skill for developing flawed, convincingly human characters, Howard is a woman whose life and death are not only worthy of literature, but instructive for the men and women of Edwardian England. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Ford Madox Ford’s The Fifth Queen Trilogy is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers.
