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John Fowles (born 1926) was an award-winning post-World War II novelist of major importance. While his works are reflective of literary tradition reaching back to Greek philosophy and Celtic romance, he was very much a contemporary existentialist, and hi...

[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 8, pp. 79-106.] A novelist who writes for a living, s...

A 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 images and new methods of describing his world," while his less adventurou...

In the following essay, Novak analyzes the "disturbing" aspects of The Magus and the novel's cultural significance.

After arising some days later from finishing the [revised version of The Magus], one feels—as is usually the case in reading Fowles—ambivalent. Doubtless "The Magus" is too long, but, as with the recent "Daniel Martin," that seems a dull thing to say. Sentences and paragraphs have been recast into a generally less sporadic if not clearly superior narrative. The erotic scenes have been developed and extended, though to no new point of revelation. And the same big, un...