The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles (Trade Paperback)

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: John Fowles
• Title: The French Lieutenant's Woman
• Publisher: ‎ Back Bay Books; First Back Bay Edition (September 1, 1998)
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Trade Paperback – ‎467 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎0316291161
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0316291163
• Item Weight: ‎ 1.13 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.3 inches
• Book Condition: Used – Very Good (shows some minimal discoloration on page edges)
• Cover Condition: Very Good
• Edition: First Back Bay Edition

Synopsis:

Perhaps the most beloved of John Fowles's internationally bestselling works, The French Lieutenant's Woman is a feat of seductive storytelling that effectively invents anew the Victorian novel. "Filled with enchanting mysteries and magically erotic possibilities" (New York Times), the novel inspired the hugely successful 1981 film starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons and is today universally regarded as a modern classic.

About the Author:

John 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 centers 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), centered 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.

In 1998, he was quoted in the New York Times Book Review as saying, "Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation."

In 2008 Fowles was named by The Times newspaper of the UK as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

In 1990, his first wife Elizabeth died of cancer, only a week after she was diagnosed. Her death affected him severely, and he did not write for a year. In 1998, Fowles married his second wife, Sarah Smith. With Sarah by his side, he died of heart failure on 5 November 2005, aged 79, in Axminster Hospital, 5 miles (8.0 km) from Lyme Regis.