Fowles, John. (1926 - 2005).

W o r k

- a novelist, poet, and non-fiction writer

- in some ways ‘a modern Thomas Hardy’, especially as a chronicler of his beloved Dorset (himself settled there), and as the editor of Thomas Hardy’s England (1984)

- highly self-conscious: realises the fictiveness of fiction itself

- presents the consciousness of the author as a figure within his own books, at certain points comments on the action, and explains how things might have been different

> sometimes considered a forefather of British postmodernism

The Collector (1963):

- concerned with possession and obsession

- a young clerk, butterfly collector, kidnaps a young woman to add her to his collection

The Magus (1965, revised 1977):

- partly based on his experience as an English teacher on a Greek island

- examines aspects of psychoanalysis and mystical philosophy

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969):

- a Victorian palaeontologist gets involved with Sarah Woodruff, a disgraced woman ill-used by a sailor

- formally experimental: uses the device of ‘alternative endings’

> filmed with a screenplay by Harold Pinter (1981)

Daniel Martin (1977):

- includes elements tempting to be read as semi-autobiographical

- a scriptwriter scouts locations for a film in Africa and takes up again with his former lover

Mantissa (1982):

- takes place entirely in the mind of a novelist recovering in hospital from a stroke

A Maggot (1985):

- a brilliant recreation of the 18^th century mind

- manifests the typically ‘fowlesian’ shifting of identity during the teasing progression of the plot: a prostitute undergoes a transformation to become a fearless Quaker