Books

Rust brown cloth (the ordinary issue - copies were issued too in black cloth, precedence indeterminate, and not nearly as uncommon thus as some dealers hope); (Tom Adams) dustwrapper. Faint spots to fore-edge and endpapers, dustwrapper spotted at flaps, lower cover panel rather dusty, with mild fraying at head of spine and a tiny tear (minimal loss) at head of front flap. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "Reg Gadney with my best wishes John Fowles Lyme Regis 14/3/99"; loosely inserted the printed programme, single sheet folded, for the Bush Theatre Club's production of The Collector, [1972]. "As stark as a police report, this novel opens with the confession of a young suburban clerk who has kidnapped an art student from outside her home in Hampstead. In his own colourless, yet curiously expressive words, Frederick Clegg tells how he held her prisoner in a remote house in the country, which he had bought for the purpose with money won in the football pools�.�.�." (publisher's blurb). Tom Maschler tells in his memoir Publisher (2005) of his first meeting with John Fowles. Maschler was then a young director at Jonathan Cape, Fowles a schoolmaster in north London. "I told John how much I had admired The Collector and then, without further ado, I asked the question which most preoccupied me: 'Is this your first book?' The answer came back immediately: 'Good God, no.' 'You have written others?' 'Yes.' 'How many?' 'Nine.'" Maschler went on to publish rewritten versions of two of these, The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman. "It is quite possible," asserted The Times's anonymous reviewer (23 May 1963), "greatly to admire a book and at the same time to dislike it intensely; and this may be many people's reaction to Mr. John Fowles's claustrophobic first novel�.�.�. The Collector is a most efficiently appointed book, but as dank and unhealthy as the cellar it describes." Reg Gadney, himself a novelist, was the second husband of Fay Maschler, first wife of Tom Maschler (they married in 1970 and divorced in 1987). Fowles was godfather to the Maschlers' daughter Alice. The Collector, adapted by David Parker and directed by John Neville, was the first production mounted by the new Bush Theatre Club at Shepherds Bush Green, London. It opened on 6 April 1972, starring Brian McDermott as Clegg and Annette Andr� as Miranda.

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.