Ford Madox Ford conference starts Friday

The International Ford Madox Ford Society will hold its first North American meeting at the Pyle Center, Sept. 20-22.

The free public conference on Ford’s writings will feature talks by well-known novelists Mary Gordon (“Final Payments” and “The Company of Women”), Nicholas Delbanco (“Consider Sappho Burning” and “Possession”), and Alan Judd (“A Breed of Heroes” and “The Devil’s Own Work”).

Ford was a novelist, poet, essayist, historian, biographer, art and literary critic. “The Good Soldier” (1915) and “Parade’s End” (1924-28) were numbered among the best 100 novels of the 20th century in a New York Times poll.

Ford discovered D.H. Lawrence, introduced Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” to a startled public, and published the drawings of Picasso and the photographs of Man Ray in The Transatlantic Review.

Conference coordinator Joseph Wiesenfarth, professor emeritus of English, can be reached at 233-2045.