John Robert Fowles
born March 31, 1926,
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, England
died
November 5, 2005, Lyme Regis, Dorset
English novelist, whose allusive and
descriptive works combine psychological
probings—chiefly of sex and love—with an
interest in social and philosophical issues.
Fowles graduated
from the University of Oxford in 1950 and
taught in Greece, France, and Britain. His
first novel, The Collector (1963; filmed
1965), about a shy man who kidnaps a girl in
a hapless search for love, was an immediate
success. This was followed by The Aristos: A
Self-Portrait in Ideas (1964), a collection
of essays reflecting Fowles’s views on such
subjects as evolution, art, and politics. He
returned to fiction with The Magus (1965,
rev. ed. 1977; filmed 1968). Set on a Greek
island, the book centres on an English
schoolteacher who struggles to discern
between fantasy and reality after
befriending a mysterious local man. The
French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969; filmed
1981), arguably Fowles’s best-known work, is
a love story set in 19th-century England
that richly documents the social mores of
that time. An example of Fowles’s original
style, the book combined elements of the
Victorian novel with postmodern works and
featured alternate endings.
Fowles’s later
fictional works include The Ebony Tower
(1974), a volume of collected novellas,
Daniel Martin (1977), and Mantissa (1982).
His last novel, A Maggot (1985), centred on
a group of travelers in the 1700s and the
mysterious events that occur during their
journey. Fowles also wrote verse,
adaptations of plays, and the text for
several photographic studies. Wormholes, a
collection of essays and writings, was
published in 1998.
