Revival: Provence from Minstrels to the Machine (1938)

"Provence" may perhaps be described as the crystallisation of the main idea running through the Great Trade Route, which we published a year ago. Of that book Mr A.G. McDonnell wrote in the Observer: "It is an Indictment, a Philipic....I know of no books to compare with this since Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man" But if "The Great Trade Route" was the destructive onslaught on dubious aspects of contemporary civilisation, "Provence" is the celebration of what might have been and what, according to Mr. Ford, may still yet be - contrasted with what is. For in that triangle of sun-baked , wind-swept, austere yet generous land, bounded as to its base by the Mediterranean and as to its sides, by the Rhone and the Alps, Mr Ford sees all the pride of past European splendour, the small healthy core of Europe's ailing present, the only promise for her future. How and why he sees all this his book alone can reveal, with its history, its moralisings, its descriptions vitalised and clarified by art.

Ford Madox Ford

Part One - The Great Trade Routes, Chapter I World Route, Chapter II London from Provence, Chapter III Destiny on the Great Route, Chapter IV Fin de Section, Part Two - Provence Seen From The North, Chapter I Provence from London, Chpater II Nature, Chapter III Darkest Provence, Chapter IV Courts of Love, Chapter V Church and Stage, Chapter VI Fine Arts, Part Three - Mise A Mort, Chapter I There the Poor Dare Plead, Chapter II Paris-Dijon-Mediterranee, Chapter III Animam non Coelum Mutare