Biography of John Fowles (1926-2005)
English novelist and essayist, master of layered story-telling, illusionism, and purposefully ambiguous endings. Among Fowles's best-known novels are THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN (1969), adapted into screen in 1981, and THE MAGUS (1965), which has gained a cult status. His protagonists must often confront their past, self-delusions and illusions, in order to gain their personal freedom or peace of mind.
John Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea, in the south-east of England, as the son of Robert Fowles, a prosperous cigar merchant, and Gladys Richards Fowles. "The rows of respectable little houses inhabited by respectable little people had an early depressive effect on me," he once said.
Fowles was educated at Alleyn Court School and Bedford School, a large boarding school designed to prepare boys for university, from ages 13 to 18. Later Fowles regretted that as a captain of prefects at Bedford School he allowed himself to exercise tyranny over the younger boys. "Being head boy was a weird experience," he confessed. "I suppose I used to beat on average three or four boys a day.... Very evil, I think. Terrible system."
After briefly attending the University of Edinburgh, Fowles began compulsory military service in 1945 with training at Dartmoor, where he spent the next two years. World War II ended shortly after his training began so Fowles never came near combat, and by 1947 he had decided that the military life was not for him.
Fowles then spent four years at at New College, Oxford, French, and German languages and literature. There he discovered the writings of the French existentialists, in particular Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. He received a degree in French in 1950 and began to consider a career as a writer.
Several teaching jobs followed: a year lecturing in English literature at the University of Poitiers, France; two years teaching English at Anargyrios College on the Greek island of Spetsai; there he met his future wife, Elisabeth Whitton; they married in 1956. Finally, between 1954 and 1963, teaching English at St. Godric's College in London, where he ultimately served as the department head.
As a novelist Fowles made his debut with The Collector (1963), a mixture of thriller and an analysis of class conflict. The Collector gained a huge success and since its publication Fowles devoted himself entirely to writing. Fowles's second novel, The Magus, used elements from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest (1623). Daniel Martin (1977) was about an English screenwriter's search for himself in his past. In the murder mystery A Maggot (1985) Fowles returned to the layered structure of The Magus.
In 1966 Fowles moved with his wife Elisabeth to Dorset. They lived first at Unerhill Farm and then settled to a cliff-top house by the sea in a southern town called Lyme Regis (the setting for The French Lieutenant's Woman). His interest in the town's local history resulted in his appointment as curator of the Lyme Regis Museum in 1979, a position he filled for a decade. Elisabeth Fowles died of cancer in 1990.
Gaining a reputation of "a cantankerous man of letters", Fowles lived quietly in Lyme. In America, his books were read in college literary courses. Fowles died at his home on November 5, 2005 at the age of 79 after a long illness. He was survived by his second wife, Sarah. Fowles published also several nonfiction books about Lyme Regis. His other works include poems, short stories, and essays. The Tree (1992) contains recollections of Fowles's childhood and explores the impact of nature on his life and work. The author's philosophical basis for much of his work can be discerned in his early collection of notes and aphorisms, The Ariosto (1964), originally subtitled A Self-Portrait in Ideas. Fowles once said: "I hate to think of the awful pages of bad philosophy that would be in my novels if I hadn't written that."
In the 1970s Fowles worked on a variety of literary projects - including a series of essays on nature - and in 1973 he published a collection of poetry, Poems. He also worked on translations from the French, including adaptations of Cinderella and the novella Ourika. His translation of Marie de France's 12th Century story Eliduc served as an inspiration for The Ebony Tower, a novella and four short stories that appeared in 1974.
Wormholes, a book of essays, was published in May 1998. The first comprehensive biography on Fowles, John Fowles--A Life in Two Worlds, was published in 2004, and the first volume of his journals appeared the same year.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
The film… doesn't reproduce the book. But I long ago realized that if you want your book reproduced, then you mustn't go anywhere near the cinema. Go to television and ask for an eight-hour serial. I think what you want in cinema is a good metaphor.
J. Fowles
Directed by Karel Reisz
Screenplay Harold Pinter
Sarah/Anna Meryl Streep
Charles /Mike Jeremy Irons
Ernestina Lynsey Baxter
Awards: Nominated for 5 Oscars. Another 9 wins & 12 nominations
The most commercially successful of Fowles' novels, The French Lieutenant's Woman, appeared in 1969. The film version of the book from 1981 was made by Karel Reisz. The story, set in the Victorian period, followed the book, but the modern subplot, a film within a film, was created by Reisz and Harold Pinter, who wrote the screenplay. "There was trouble with the proposal scene," wrote Fowles in his diary, "and one day Karel rang me up to see if I could help - he felt it was too curt and quick. 'Harold says he'll do anything, but he simply can't write a happy scene.'"
Before them Fred Zinneman had planned to direct a film based on the book, but he did not find the right actress for the title role. The script was written by Dennis Potter. Also the directors Mike Nichols and Franklin Schaffner wrestled for a short with their own versions. Fowles had little to do with the making of the film. Reisz later said, that for him the project came alive when Meryl Streep was signed.
The French Lieutenant's Woman, set largely in Lyme Regis in the 1860s, re-created the Victorian melodrama. Fowles moved between past and present, added footnotes, quotations from Darwin, Marx, and the greats Victorian poets, and commented Victorian politics and customs. This experimental novel had different endings, one heart-warming, another shocking. "In some ways the unhappy ending pleases the novelist. He has set out on a voyage and announced, I have failed and must set out again. If you create a happy ending, there is a somewhat false sense of having solved life's problems." (Fowles in The New York Times, November 13, 1977)