Abstract
One result of early work on The Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, contracted by Oxford University Press in 2023, this article considers the role of large-scale critical editions in modern scholarship in both general and more focused ways. What contextual and critical drivers are involved when a decision is made to publish a Complete Works and what are the decisions facing editorial teams about how best to structure and approach the task? With a particular focus on Ford’s letters the article also addresses life writing as key to conception and development of his Complete Works. It demonstrates the learnings from attending to Ford’s letters as material objects and biographical markers, both of life events and his distinct epistolary nature, along with their contribution to Ford scholarship and that of twentieth-century literary studies.