Everything about John Fowles totally explained
John Robert Fowles (
March 31,
1926 –
November 5,
2005) was an
English novelist and
essayist.
Biography
Birth and family
Fowles was born in
Leigh-on-Sea in
Essex,
England, the son of Gladys Richards and Robert John Fowles. Robert Fowles came from a family of middle-class merchants in London. His father Reginald was a partner in the firm Allen & Wright, a
tobacco importer. His mother died when Robert was 6. At age 26, after receiving legal training, Robert enlisted in the
Honourable Artillery Company, and spent three years in the trenches of
Flanders during
World War I leaving him with memories that haunted him for the rest of his life. Robert's brother Jack died in the war as well, leaving a widow and three children. In 1920 the year Robert was demobilized, his father Reginald died. Robert became responsible for five young half-siblings and the children of his brother and though he'd hoped to practice law, the obligation of raising an extended family forced him into the family trade of tobacco importing. Though always successful, the financial strain of so many dependents meant Robert Fowles would never be a wealthy man.
Richards belonged to an Essex family originally from London as well; her father J.S. Richards had been the chief buyer of lace for department store
John Lewis Ltd. The Richards family moved to Westcliff-on-Sea in 1918, as
Spanish Flu swept through Europe, for Essex was said to have a healthy climate. Robert met Gladys Richards at a tennis club in
Westcliff-on-Sea in 1924. Though she was ten years younger, and he in bad health from the war, they were married a year later on
June 18,
1925. Nine months and two weeks later Gladys gave birth to John Robert Fowles. Throughout his career, Robert commuted over an hour each direction into London.
Early life and education
Fowles spent his childhood closely surrounded by his mother and by his cousin Peggy Fowles, 18 at the time of his birth, who was his nursemaid and close companion for ten years. Fowles attended
Alleyn Court Preparatory School. The work of
Richard Jefferies and his character Bevis were Fowles's favorite books as a child. He was an only child until he was 16.
In 1939, Fowles won a spot at
Bedford School, a two-hour train journey north of his home. His time at Bedford coincided with the
Second World War. Fowles was a student at Bedford until 1944. He became
Head Boy and was also an athletic standout: a member of the rugby-football third team, the
Fives first team and captain of the cricket team, for which he was
bowler.
After graduating from the
Bedford School in 1944, Fowles enrolled in a Naval Short Course at and
Edinburgh University. Fowles was set to take a commission in the
Royal Marines. He completed his training on
May 8,
1945—
VE Day. Fowles was instead assigned to
Okehampton Camp in the countryside near Devon for two years.
In 1947, after completing his military service, Fowles entered
New College, Oxford, where he studied both
French and
German, although he dropped German and concentrated on French for his BA. Fowles was undergoing a political transformation. Upon leaving the marines he wrote, "I ... began to hate what I was becoming in life—a British Establishment young hopeful. I decided instead to become a sort of anarchist."
It was also at Oxford that Fowles first considered life as a writer, particularly after reading
existentialists like
Jean-Paul Sartre and
Albert Camus. Though Fowles didn't identify as an existentialist, their writing like Fowles was motivated from a feeling that the world was wrong.
Teaching career
Fowles spent his early adult life as a teacher. His first year after Oxford was spent at the
University of Poitiers. At the end of the year, he received two offers: one from the French department at
Winchester, the other "from a ratty school in
Greece," Fowles said, "Of course, I went against all the dictates of
common sense and took the Greek job."
In 1951, Fowles became an English master at the Anargyrios and Korgialenios School of Spetses on the island of
Spetsai, a critical part of Fowles's life, as the island would be where he met his future wife Elizabeth Whitton, and would later serve as the setting of his novel
The Magus. Fowles was happy in Greece, especially outside of the school. He wrote poems that he later published, and became close to his fellow exiles. But in 1953 Fowles and the other masters at the school were all fired for trying to institute reforms, and Fowles returned to England.
On the island of Spetsai, Fowles had grown close to Elizabeth Whitton, who was married to one of the other teachers. Whitton's marriage was already falling apart because of the entanglement with Fowles, and though they returned to England at the same time, they were no longer in each other's company. It was during this period that Fowles began drafting
The Magus. His separation from Elizabeth didn't last long. On
April 2,
1954 they were married and Fowles became stepfather to Elizabeth's daughter from her first marriage, Anna. After his marriage, Fowles taught English as a foreign language to students from other countries for nearly ten years at St. Godric's College, an all-girls in Hampstead, London.
Literary career
In late 1960, though he'd already drafted
The Magus, Fowles began working on
The Collector. He finished his first draft in a month, but spent more than a year making revisions before showing it to his agent. Michael S. Howard, the publisher at
Jonathan Cape was enthusiastic about the manuscript. The book was published in 1963 and when the paperback rights were sold in the spring of that year it was "probably the highest price that had hitherto been paid for a first novel," according to Howard. The success of his novel meant that Fowles was able to stop teaching and devote himself full-time to a literary career.
The Collector was also optioned and became a film in 1965.
Against the counsel of his publisher, Fowles insisted that his second book published be
The Aristos, a non-fiction collection of philosophy. Afterward, he set about collating all the drafts he'd written of what would become his most studied work,
The Magus (1965), based in part on his experiences in Greece.
In 1966 Fowles left London, moving to a farm in
Dorset, where the isolated farm house became the model for "The Dairy" in the book Fowles was then writing,
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). The farm was too remote, "total solitude gets a bit monotonous," Fowles remarked, and in
1968 he and his wife moved to
Lyme Regis in
Dorset, where he lived in the Belmont House, also used as a setting for parts of
The French Lieutenant's Woman. In the same year, he adapted
The Magus for cinema.
The film version of
The Magus (1968) was generally considered awful. For example, when Woody Allen was asked whether he'd make changes in his life if he'd the opportunity to do it all over again, he jokingly replied he'd do "everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus.".
The French Lieutenant's Woman was made into a film in
1981 with a
screenplay by the British
playwright Harold Pinter (subsequently a
Nobel laureate in
Literature) and was nominated for an
Oscar.
Fowles lived the rest of his life in Lyme Regis. His works
The Ebony Tower (1974),
Daniel Martin (1977),
Mantissa (1981), and
A Maggot (1985) were all written from Belmont House. Fowles became a member of the Lyme Regis community, serving as the curator of the Lyme Regis Museum from 1979-1988, retiring from the museum after having a mild
stroke. Fowles was occasionally involved in politics in Lyme Regis, and occasionally wrote letters to the editor advocating preservation. Despite this involvement, Fowles was generally considered reclusive.
Fowles died at his home in Lyme Regis on
November 5,
2005, after a long illness.
Major works
Many
critics now consider his work on the cusp between
modernism and
postmodernism.
Bibliography
Further Information
Get more info on 'John Fowles'.
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