Books

First edition, first impression, signed by the author on the title page, "John Fowles, Lyme Regis, 1995". His debut novel, The Collector "established Fowles as a leading novelist on both sides of the Atlantic" (ODNB). It was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar in 1965. Fowles lived in Lyme Regis for much of his life; the Dorset town was the setting for The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). Octavo. Original reddish-brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt, top edge red. With dust jacket designed by Tom Adams. A touch of wear to corners and spine ends, occasional faint foxing to edges and contents; jacket unclipped, slight rubbing to extremities resulting in a handful of nicks, spine lightly toned: a very good copy in like jacket. .

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.