One of Ford's most famous works is the novel "The Good Soldier" (1915). Set just before World War I, "The Good Soldier" chronicles the tragic expatriate lives of two "perfect couples", one British and one American, using intricate flashbacks. In the "Dedicatory Letter to Stella Ford” that prefaces the novel, Ford reports that a friend pronounced "The Good Soldier" “the finest French novel in the English language!” Ford pronounced himself a "Tory mad about historic continuity" and believed the novelist's function was to serve as the historian of his own time. However, he was dismissive of the Conservative Party, referring to it as "the Stupid Party."