Fowles, John Robert (1926– ), novelist, educated at New College, Oxford. His first novel
The Collector (1963), a psychological thriller, was followed by
The Aristos (1965), an idiosyncratic collection of notes and aphorisms, and
The Magus (1966, revised version 1977), a novel set largely on the Greek island of ‘Phraxos’, where British schoolmaster Nicholas D'Urfe is subjected to a series of mysterious apparitions which give the novel a narrative complexity and mythological dimension faintly suggestive of
magic realism.
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) is a semi-historical novel, set largely in Lyme Regis in 1867; wealthy amateur palaeontologist Charles Smithson, engaged to conventional Ernestina Freeman, falls under the spell of Sarah Woodruff, a lady's companion, who is believed to have been deserted by the French lover of the title. His pursuit of Sarah breaks his engagement, but Sarah eludes him, and when he finds her again she has become a
New Woman.
The Ebony Tower (1974) is a collection of novellas;
Daniel Martin (1977) is a long, self-searching semi-naturalistic work about a screenwriter.
Mantissa (1982) consists largely of extended erotic fantasy on the subject of
la femme inspiratrice. A Maggot (1985), an 18th-cent. murder mystery, was followed by
The Tree (1992), an exploration of the impact of nature on Fowles's work, and
Tessera (1993).
