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Goodreads Choice Awards 2024 Opening Round
John Fowles

John Fowles’s Followers (2,771)

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John Fowles


Born
in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, The United Kingdom
March 31, 1926

Died
November 05, 2005

Website

Genre
Literature & Fiction

Influences
D.H. Lawrence, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Sade, Danie ...more


John Robert Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea, a small town in Essex. He recalled the English suburban culture of the 1930s as oppressively conformist and his family life as intensely conventional. Of his childhood, Fowles said "I have tried to escape ever since."

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 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 Oxford, where he discov ...more

Combine Editions

Average rating: 3.94 · 217,322 ratings · 14,448 reviews · 121 distinct works • Similar authors
The Collector
3.97 avg rating — 84,316 ratings — published 1963 — 305 editions
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The Magus
4.05 avg rating — 60,297 ratings — published 1965 — 225 editions
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The French Lieutenant’s Woman
3.88 avg rating — 53,906 ratings — published 1969 — 299 editions
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The Ebony Tower
3.69 avg rating — 4,186 ratings — published 1974 — 101 editions
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A Maggot
3.58 avg rating — 3,414 ratings — published 1985 — 83 editions
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Daniel Martin
3.79 avg rating — 2,749 ratings — published 1977 — 58 editions
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Mantissa
3.15 avg rating — 2,640 ratings — published 1982 — 64 editions
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The Tree
by
3.75 avg rating — 1,683 ratings — published 1979 — 43 editions
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Áristos
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3.69 avg rating — 726 ratings — published 1964 — 42 editions
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Wormholes: Essays and Occas...
3.77 avg rating — 338 ratings — published 1998 — 22 editions
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More books by John Fowles…

Series by John Fowles

The Journals: Volume I: 194... The Journals: Volume II: 19...
(2 books)
by
4.07 avg rating — 170 ratings

Quotes by John Fowles  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed."

"I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self."

"You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.”
― John Fowles, The Magus
tags: betrayal, hitler, tragedy, war
528 likes
Like

“To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.”
― John Fowles, The Magus
tags: escape, poetry, suicide
293 likes
Like

“I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.”
― John Fowles, The Collector
272 likes
Like

Polls

August 2016 New School Group Read

 
  45 votes, 25.7%

 
  20 votes, 11.4%

1966, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, 176 pages
 
  17 votes, 9.7%

1931, The Waves by Virginia Woolf, 297 pages
 
  16 votes, 9.1%

1997, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, 432 pages
 
  16 votes, 9.1%

 
  15 votes, 8.6%

1963, The Collector by John Fowles, 282 pages
 
  12 votes, 6.9%

1931, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, 418 pages
 
  9 votes, 5.1%

1990, Possession by A.S. Byatt, 555 pages
 
  8 votes, 4.6%

1996, The Beach by Alex Garland, 436 pages
 
  5 votes, 2.9%

1948, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, 320 pages
 
  4 votes, 2.3%

1949, The Way West by A.B. Guthrie Jr., 352 pages
 
  4 votes, 2.3%

1942, The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas, 528 pages
 
  3 votes, 1.7%

1924, Precious Bane by Mary Webb, 328 pages
 
  1 vote, 0.6%

175 total votes
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