John Robert Fowles was born March 31, 1926 in Leigh-on-Sea; a small town located about 40 miles from London in the county of Essex, England. He recalls the English suburban culture of the 1930s as oppressively conformist and his family life as intensely conventional. Fowles attended Bedford School, a large boarding school designed to prepare boys for university, from ages 13 to 18. After briefly attending the University of Edinburgh, Fowles began compulsory military service and within two years was promoted to lieutenant. However, World War II ended before he saw combat. Fowles then spent four years at Oxford, where he discovered the writings of the French existentialists. In particular he admired Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, whose writings corresponded with his own ideas about conformity and the will of the individual. 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; and finally, between 1954 and 1963,
teaching English at St. Godric's College in London, where he ultimately
served as the department head. The time spent in Greece was of great
importance to Fowles. During his tenure
on the island he began to write
poetry to overcome a long-time repression about writing. Between 1952 and
1960 he wrote several novels but offered none to a publisher, considering
them all incomplete in some way and too lengthy.
In late 1960 Fowles completed the first draft of The Collector in just four weeks. He continued to revise it until the summer of 1962, when he submitted it to a publisher; it appeared in the spring of 1963 and was an immediate best-seller. The critical acclaim and commercial success of the book allowed Fowles to devote all of his time to writing.
The Aristos, a collection of philosophical thoughts and musings on art, human nature and other subjects, appeared the following year. Then in 1965, The Magus - drafts of which Fowles had been working on for over a decade - was published. Among the seven novels that Fowles has written, The Magus has perhaps generated the most enduring interest, becoming something of a cult novel, particularly in the U.S. With parallels to Shakespeare's The Tempest and Homer's The Odyssey, The Magus is a traditional quest story made complex by the incorporation of dilemmas involving freedom, hazard and a variety of existential uncertainties. Fowles compared it to a detective story because of the way it teases the reader.
The most commercially successful of Fowles' novels, The French Lieutenant's Woman, appeared in 1969. It resembles a Victorian novel in structure and detail, while pushing the traditional boundaries of narrative in a very modern manner.
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,
Poenis. He also worked on translations from the French,
including adaptations of Cinderella and the novella Ourika. His translation of Marie de
France's 
century story Eliduc served as an inspiration for
The Ebony Tower, a novella and four short stories that
appeared in 1974.
Daniel Martin, a long and somewhat autobiographical novel spanning over 40 years in the life of a screenwriter, appeared in 1977, along with a revised version of The Magus. These were followed by Mantissa (1982), a fable about a novelist's struggle with his muse; and A Maggot (1985), an 18th century mystery which combines science fiction and history.
In addition to The Aristos, Fowles has written a variety of non-fiction pieces including many essays, reviews, and forwards/afterwards to other "writers' novels. He has also written the text for several photographic compilations, including Shipwreck (1975), Islands (1978) and The Tree (1979).
Since 1968, Fowles has lived on the southern coast of England in the small harbor town of 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.
Wormholes, a book of essays, was published in May 1998. J.R. Fowles died in 2005 at the age of 79 years old.
Великий мистификатор
Джон Фаулз - величайший романист, культовый писатель XX века, чьи романы ``Коллекционер'', ``Волхв'', ``Женщина французского лейтенанта'', ``Мантисса'' расходятся миллионными тиражами и с момента выхода являются классикой мировой литературы.
Бывший преподаватель английского языка и литературы Джон Фаулз, кроме сборника повестей и рассказов ``Башня из черного дерева'', философского труда ``Аристос'', написанного не без оглядки на Гераклита, сборника стихотворений, переводов с французского, сценариев к фильмам, литературно-критических заметок и множества других текстов, где говорится о таких разных сторонах человеческой жизни, как домашнее консервирование, феминизм и игра в крокет, был еще автором очень разных романов, которые и принесли ему мировую известность.
Первый же из них - ``Коллекционер'', опубликованный в 1963 году, стал бестселлером и позволил автору оставить учительскую деятельность и заняться литературным трудом. Это история одинокого молодого человека, банковского клерка, испытывающего страсть к коллекционированию бабочек и молодой художнице Миранде, в результате чего гибнут и девушка и насекомые. Спустя несколько лет Фаулз укрепил свой успех другим романом. В 1965 году вышел ``Волхв'', считающийся лучшей книгой писателя, которого начнут называть ``английским Набоковым''. Следом появится не менее громкий роман ``Женщина французского лейтенанта''.
После подробного исследования XIX века в этой книге Фаулз выпустит еще два произведения - эпопею ``Дэниел Мартин'' и роман ``Мантисса'', а затем снова отправится в глубь веков. На сей раз действие его книги ``Червь'' разворачивается в XVIII веке. Великий шутник и мистификатор Фаулз любил провоцировать читателя. А потому его последний роман заканчивается характерно: о развязке читатель узнает со слов экзальтированной женщины-сектантки, где невозможно понять, что случилось на самом деле, а что привиделось ей.