John Fowles Summary

Biography EssayA novelist who writes for a living, says author John Fowles, is an altogether different creature from one whose art is his life. The latter, a "dynamic artist," seeks "to form new image... Read more

[This entry was updated by Thomas C. Foster (University of Michigan--—Flint) with the entry by Ellen Pifer (University of Delaware) in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, volume... Read more

“I've always wanted to write,” declared John Fowles in a 1964 essay, “(in this order) poems, philosophy, and only then novels” (published in Wormholes: Essays and Occasional Writin... Read more

Critical Essay by Dwight Eddins One of the central concerns of metafiction from Borges to Barth—or perhaps, more accurately, from Laurence Sterne to Barth—has been the reanimation and ex... Read more

In the following excerpt, Tarbox examines the underlying theme of Fowles's novels, analyzing the trials that his protagonists undergo in order to achieve self-realization and authenticity. In m... Read more

Below, Broich analyzes "The Enigma " in the context of the mimetic and aesthetic traditions of British short fiction, acknowledging the story's seminal influence on the postmodern... Read more