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 (Birmingham Newman University), Louise McDonald (Birmingham Newman University), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Dates

First circulation or publication Feb 1911

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
Satire
Utopian / Dystopian

Resources

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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 agrarian socialists (on both sides of the Atlantic divide) and popularized by the Arts and…

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1317 words

Citation: Waddell, Nathan. "The Simple Life Limited". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 November 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=28508, accessed 27 November 2024.]

Ford Madox Ford, The Simple Life Limited

Dates

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