John Robert Fowles (1926–2005) was an English novelist. Influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, Fowles’s works explored psychological, social, and philosophical issues.
Born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, Fowles was educated at Bedford School, Edinburgh University, and New College, Oxford, where he studied French. He served in the Royal Marines (1945–46) and taught in schools in France, Greece, and London.
An allusive and richly descriptive writer, Fowles wrote his first novel, the psychological thriller The Collector, in 1963. However, the magic realist novel The Magus (1965; revised 1977) is the book that made his name. Set in the 1960s on a remote Greek island, The Magus is a disturbing and much-imitated tale about an English schoolteacher, his bizarre experiences, and his association with a master trickster.
The semi-historical novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) gained Fowles worldwide popularity, in large part due to the film version with Meryl Streep in the title role.
Fowles’s later books, The Ebony Tower (1974; a collection of short stories,) Daniel Martin (1977,) Mantissa (1982,) and A Maggot (1985,) suffered a critical backlash but emphasized his willingness to experiment. He spent his later years publishing non-fiction, including his journals (2003 and 2006.)
University of Michigan-Flint’s Thomas C Foster wrote the assessment Understanding John Fowles (1994.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Fowles
The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.
—John Fowles
Topics: Questions
Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be.
—John Fowles
Whatever sympathy I feel towards religions, whatever admiration for some of their adherents, whatever historical or biological necessity I see in them, whatever metaphorical truth, I cannot accept them as credible explanations of reality; and they are incredible to me in proportion to the degree that they require my belief in positive human attributes and intervenient powers in their divinities.
—John Fowles
Topics: Religion
We all write poems. It is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
—John Fowles
Topics: Poets, Poetry
There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.
—John Fowles
Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
—John Fowles
Topics: Duty
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