The Good Soldier is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends. The story is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the story of those dissolutions and the deaths of three characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological fashion.

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature. Ford is now remembered for his novels The Good Soldier, the Parade's End tetralogy and The Fifth Queen trilogy. The Good Soldier is frequently included among the great literature of the 20th century.