Ford Madox Ford, novelist, editor, poet and cultural critic, was born in Merton, Surrey, to an artistic and bohemian clan on 17th December, 1873. He was Ford Madox Brown's first grandchild, the first issue of Catherine Madox Brown's marriage of 1872 to Franz Hüffer (or Francis Hueffer, to which he anglicised his name). The distinguished society portraitist Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted the wedding portraits. When Lucy Madox Brown, Catherine's sister, married William Rossetti, brother to Dante Gabriel and Christina, two years later, Ford Madox Ford's eventual relationship to significant literary and artistic figures of the day, and notably to the Pre-Raphaelites, was confirmed.

The Hüffers, for their part, were an old Münster famil

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First published 28 October 2000

Citation: Haslam, Sara. "Ford Madox Ford". The Literary Encyclopedia. 28 October 2000.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1584, accessed 9 February 2010.]