Books

London: Jonathan Cape, 1963. First edition. Fine in near-fine jacket.. Inscribed first edition of this tremendous '60s novel, the still-shocking story of captivity and resistance. Fowles's first published novel, a brutal work whose end is promised in its beginning, and which keeps every promise it makes. Full of allusions to THE TEMPEST – the Collector takes the false name Ferdinand; his captive records him as Caliban – and with a certain thematic resemblance, THE COLLECTOR explores in a modern setting the violent enactments of class and gender hierarchies present in that play. Written in two first-person narratives: one by a young man who comes to believe that his personal disappointments entitle him absolutely to ownership of a human being; and the other by the woman he kidnaps, whose tireless efforts to escape and maintain dignity are no use to her, who fights with every ounce of ingenuity she possesses, and loses. THE COLLECTOR is a novel in some ways wiser than its…

The Collector is the debut novel of English author John Fowles. It was first published in 1963 by Jonathan Cape and is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall and collects butterflies in his spare time. Clegg is infatuated with Miranda Grey, a middle-class art student at the Slade School of Art. Unable to make any contact with her but obsessed with his unrelenting desire, Clegg decides to add her to his 'collections' by kidnapping her and holding her captive in the cellar of his rural farmhouse. What follows is a chilling exploration of power, art, freedom, and the consequences of human actions.

The first edition of 'The Collector' published by Jonathan Cape in 1963 would have the original dust jacket design and no mention of later printings on the copyright page.