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Big Bill's John Fowles Stuff!
(He wrote "The Magus" and "The Collector", don't you know!)
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In the years since the publication of his first novel, "The Collector", John Fowles has established himself as one of the most significant novelists of our times But he is hardly prolific.
A new novel by John Fowles is as big an event in the literary world as it is a rarity. His millions of admirers throughout the world usually have to wait many years between the appearance of these novels, but they're rarely disappointed. All his fictional work sells out quickly and the paperback versions have sold millions of copies.
As might be expected with such a skillful novelist, John Fowles is one of the most collectable living authors around. His early novels, in particular, fetch very high prices, but as they are so recent, it is absolutely vital that they are in Fine condition with a pristine dust-wrapper. Following the huge success of "The French Lieutenant's Woman", published in 1969 and made into a splendid film twelve years later, John Fowles' publishers have responded to the demands of collectors and readers alike and issued his most recent books in very high print runs, but despite this they still turn up regularly in dealers' catalogues just weeks after publication. John Fowles' novels tend to double in value within a few weeks of publication - a sure sign of a very collectable author.
John Fowles had been working as a teacher for eleven years when his first novel was published. He'd enjoyed a rich and varied career, though, and much of his time was spent teaching English as a foreign language on the Greek island of Spetsae. He was always interested in writing and no doubt some of his stockpile of manuscripts date from this period - indeed, most of his works have very long gestation periods. We know, for instance, that his book of 'personal philosophy', 'The Aristos", was started while he was still a student at New College, Oxford in the late 1940s, almost two decades before it was published by Jonathan Cape in 1965, and his 1966 novel, "The Magus", was written in the mid-1950s.
Despite all this early writing, John Fowles' first attempt to get his work published wasn't until 1962 when he submitted a travel book to literary agent Paul Scott, himself a celebrated author who counted among his many successes the very popular "Raj Quartet". Scott was an acute judge of talent. He enjoyed John Fowles' book, but suggested that his particular skill was more suited to writing fiction, so John Fowles sat down to work and within a month he produced 'The Collector". It was published by Jonathan Cape early in April 1963.
The book was an immediate success, particularly in America where 40,000 copies of the little Brown edition were sold in its first year. Indeed, such was its success that Cape managed to sell the American rights to the publishers Little Brown and the film rights to British Lion even before publication in Britain - a hitherto unheard of achievement for an unknown writer's first novel! The acclaim which greeted "The Collector" came from readers and critics alike, with one commentator writing that "it is early to sound the trumpets, but it does look as if the new England has brought forth a novelist at last".
Although no exact figures are known today, it is thought that 3,000 copies of the rust coloured book stamped in gold were produced.
The dust-wrapper for "The Collector" is one of the most attractive to adorn his books. Designed by Tom Adams, it is very reminiscent of Richard Chopping's designs for the later James Bond books by Ian Fleming. Needless to say, it is absolutely vital that this is present. One dealer I spoke to has been trying to sell a Fine copy of "The Collector" without a dust-wrapper for two years without success, which is somewhat surprising as there seem to be so few Fine copies around today. The American edition published by little Brown a few months later has the same dust-wrapper design, but the whole book is slightly larger.
Our earlier feature on John John Fowles in B&MC No.26 described the plot of this powerful psychological thriller in some detail. This macabre tale of how repressed clerk and butterfly collector Freddie Clegg kidnaps beautiful art student Miranda and effectively adds her to his collection might raise doubts in some readers' minds as to John Fowles' attitudes to all kinds of collectors, even book collectors. But John Fowles is an avid bibliophile himself, although he has no special interests: "All I have are waifs and strays, a broken backed detritus from the last four centuries, and most of which the rest of the world has quite rightly consigned to oblivion."
His tastes are rather esoteric as his own account of his reading and collecting habits shows. Tucked next to "The Diabolid", a furious squib written by William Combe in 1777, is the 1816 volume of 'Spotting Magazine' and the hilariously priggish "Account of a visit to Rome" (l899). He also has the intriguingly titled "An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting" (1804), a 1761 edition of Voltaire's "Candide" containing the first edition of the spurious second part, a prison escape story from 1789 called 'Memoires de Trenck", Swinburne's copy of "Roswall and Lillian" and an 1897 copy of "Lost Countess Falka", a yellow back by Richard Henry Savage which John Fowles says is "currently my nomination for the worst novel in the English language!" Most of John Fowles' personal collection is made up of old travel books or contemporary accounts of old trials, but the most important factor for him when buying a book is that it's an early edition: "I prefer early editions. Textual accuracy and apparatus attract me far less than the idea that this is how the books 'felt' when the writer was still alive. The kind of books I collect are... glimpses of an unknown past."
In a sense, the same can be said of John Fowles' second novel, "The Magus", actually written long before "The Collector" but not published until 1966. It certainly is a product of its time and if the past it portrays isn't exactly unknown, it is very far removed from the hustle and bustle of late 1980s life. "The Magus" tells of a quasi-mystical spiritual journey from a London saturated with beatniks, art students and 'Penguin New Writing" to the peace and tranquillity of a sun-kissed Greek island - the kind of journey John Fowles took himself. Although some critics and even John Fowles have dismissed the book as mere hocus pocus, it had a huge following, particularly amongst young Americans. Critics there hailed John Fowles as the most significant novelist of the Sixties, and those youngsters who had once carried battered copies of Herman Hesse's "Sidhartha" and "Demian" in the back pocket of their jeans now replaced them with a copy of 'The Magus". John Fowles was always slightly cynical of this cult following: "I now know the generation whose mind it most attracts and that it must always substantially remain a novel of adolescence written by a retarded adolescent." Perhaps this explains why John Fowles found it necessary to drastically revise the book in 1977.
"The Magus", a long novel running to 617 pages, was published by Jonathan Cape in April 1966. Physically, it is a very attractive volume with grey/white speckled soft cloth boards and a purple cloth spine, rather in the style of many American books. The dust-wrapper features a striking psychedelic design by Tom Adams which, incidentally, was repeated on the end papers of the 1977 edition. In recent years, this novel has become quite hard to hard to find in Fine condition - a common fate for larger books whose bulk renders them more prone to bumps and nicks. "The Magus" is doubly susceptible to wear as its slightly "fIuffy' cloth tends to fray and become rubbed more easily than the more normal smooth cloth.
Up to this point, John Fowles' success was mainly confined to America - a fact that he greatly regretted. English critics tended to ignore him, and if his work was ever discussed, it was largely dismissed. "The Collector", for instance, was reviewed by several commentators as a crime novel. This was all to change, though, when John Fowles produced "The French Lieutenant's Woman", one of the seminal works of the last few decades.
John Fowles once wrote that he much preferred historical memoirs and old accounts of real happenings to novels. He considers true history far more entertaining and exciting than fiction, and says "my predilection for this kind of true history... does help me in writing my own fiction". This is vividly apparent in "The French Lieutenant's Woman", a marvelously constructed novel which is packed with the minutiae of mid-Victorian life and society.
To call it a historical novel is an understatement; John Fowles isn't content to just present his story in a 'vague' historical period which bears little resemblance to reality. He presents his action on precise days and sets his domestic dramas against a backdrop of actual events - social, political and religious - that were occurring on those exact days. We often hear, for instance, the protagonists of the novel discuss Acts of Parliament that were being passed in London at the same time as the events of the plot unfold. The story is set in Lyme Regis in the Spring and Summer of 1867, and John Fowles used his immense knowledge of the town to reconstruct the place exactly, along with the social mores and personal habits of the day. Leaving aside the actual plot (a rash thing to do with such a powerful story), one learns more about life and society in those times from "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and, much more recently, from "A Maggot" than by reading a whole library of learned histories.
"The French Lieutenant's Woman" finally established John Fowles' reputation on this side of the Atlantic, so much so that it was awarded the Silver Pen Award in 1969 And the W.H. Smith Literary Award the following year. To date, its paperback sales in Britain alone run to many millions, and it has been claimed that the book has been responsible for a marked increase in tourism to Lyme Regis! Will John Fowles' Lyme Regis attract as many visitors as Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon or the Brontes' Haworth in the future? If it does it will be largely due to the efforts of John Fowles himself as he is currently the curator of Lyme Regis Museum - a position which gives him ample opportunity to indulge his twin passions of local history and local wildlife.
'The French Lieutenant's Woman" was published by Cape in May 1969 - the exact date is hard to determine but the copy in the British Library is stamped 23 May, and as publishers usually dispatch copies to the copyright libraries a few days before official publication, it is reasonably easy to project the exact date. The 445-page volume was bound in black cloth stamped in gold and issued in a burgundy dust-wrapper with gold lettering. The endpapers of the first edition feature a drawing of the enigmatic Sarah Woodruff, the heroine of the novel.
Although by no means as scarce as 'The Magus" (it was given a much larger initial print run), Fine copies are very sought-after and fetch very high prices, largely because it is John Fowles' major novel and sure to be read for many years to come.
Since John Fowles' next fictional work, "The Ebony Tower", the demand for his work from collectors has almost been met by his publishers, although it takes initial print runs of several hundred thousands to do so. Values tend to be lower, but this is no indication of a lessening of literary worth - only of the scarcity of earlier titles.
"The Ebony Tower" represented something of a departure for John Fowles as it is a collection of four novellas. It was yet another phenomenal success, though, particularly in America where it gained a place in the ten best selling books of 1974, despite the fact that it wasn't issued until the middle of September. It was published in Britain by Cape the same month. John Fowles has only produced three novels in the fifteen years since "The Ebony Tower" but they are all very collectable, even 'Mantissa" which almost everyone agrees was a failing off from his usually very high standards. All these books are very easy to find in Fine condition and if you haven't done so already, snap them up now and store them carefully as they are sure to appreciate in value over the years.
"Daniel Martin" (Jonathan Cape, 1977) is John Fowles' largest novel to date, spanning three decades, several countries and running to over 700 pages - little wonder, then, that it appeared eight years after his last major novel, "The French Lieutenant's Woman" In John Fowles' own words, it was "Intended as a defence and illustration of an unfashionable philosophy, humanism, and also an exploration of what it is to be English". This particular volume was bound in brown cloth stamped in gold and issued in an attractive green dust-wrapper with black and gold lettering, similar in style to "The French lieutenant's Woman".
Since these later novels are so easy to acquire in Fine condition, collectors might prefer to accept the harder challenge of securing signed copies, which should be worth much more in the future. John Fowles held regular signing sessions in the l97Os so they aren't too hard to come by.
Signed copies of "Mantissa", a slight erotic fantasy, might prove an equally good buy. Published by Cape in 1982, it is by far the least sought-after of all John Fowles' novels, even though, in my opinion, it has a very attractive dust-wrapper. Signed copies are much harder to find, though, and should become very sought-after in the future.
John Fowles' most recent novel, "A Maggot", is John Fowles at his very best, and most original. Once again, he uses his astonishing knowledge of history to recreate a few months in 1736. It was then that an unexplained and sinister occurrence concerning the disappearance of a young nobleman in what was taken to be the work of the devil (or was it people from the future?) was indirectly responsible for the birth of Ann Lee, a real person who founded the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, better known as the Shakers. The novel itself is constructed in the form of depositions given to an investigator by all the concerned parties, from the prostitute Rebecca Lee to the roguish actor/manservant David Jones, and printed sporadically throughout the text are facsimile reproductions of a contemporary newspaper, the 'Historical Chronicle', which provides a fascinating backdrop to the story.
John Fowles weaves fiction and reality with consummate skill, in a way that few other authors have done. As he writes in the epilogue of "A Maggot": "I have the greatest respect for exact and scrupulously documented history." One of his favourite authors is Daniel Defoe and, in many ways, both "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and "A Maggot" are a kind of homage to Defoe's books like "Robinson Crusoe", fiction based around real-life castaway Alexander Selkirk, and "Journal of the Plague Year", fiction purporting to be a memoir of the plague of 1665 and in which Defoe's historical accuracy is as reliable as any more scholarly treatise. John Fowles recognises this debt himself, writing: "I have mentioned Daniel Defoe.. ..only once in these pages; which is poor recognition of the admiration and liking I have always felt for him. 'A Maggot' is not at all meant to be in any direct imitation; he is, in any case, inimitable. To following some of what I take to be the underlying approach and purpose in his novels, I happily confess to.
"A Maggot" was published by Cape in 1985. Bound in smooth black cloth stamped in gold, it was issued with an attractive dust-wrapper showing an eighteenth century portrait of a girl. Because it is seen to represent John Fowles' return to first class literary form, ft is much more sought-after than 'Mantissa".
There can be little doubt that John Fowles is one of our foremost novelists. Whether he is writing psychological thrillers, historical fiction or even mythological fantasies, he is always striking new paths in literature - it is impossible for his readers to predict where he will go next. Who but John Fowles could provide two separate endings for one novel as he did in "The French Lieutenant's Woman"? It is far too early to assess his impact on twentieth century literature yet, but it is certain that he has many followers but no imitators. It's also clear that his popularity among readers and collectors alike is beyond dispute, and there are no indications that this is going to change for many years to come.
A brief word on how ordering books works. If you click on any of the links below, you'll be taken to the page at Amazon where you can buy the book. Because you've linked to there from my site, I get commission on the sale. It's not a lot, but it helps to keep this and my other sites afloat.
Where can you get all those old, out of print books? Here!
And if you fancy searching Amazon.com for any li'l ol'thang at all....why not go direct from here!
Or if you prefer Amazon.co.uk
The above article was adapted from the August 1989 issue of Book and Magazine Collector (UK.) which was originally authored by one Kevin Nudd.
www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/John_Fowles.htm
www.twbookmark.com/authors/2/497/
http://www.lymelight-books.demon.co.uk/jfcntnt.htm
www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jfowles.htm
http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,-71,00.html
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