Books

1st Edition. Hardcover. First edition in brown boards [preceded by a very rare first issue in black boards]. Crown 8vo, pp. 283. First edition in a very fine, first state [p/c] dustwrapper without reviews [this dustwrapper review thing is a red herring - no one has ever seen any other "first edition" dustwrapper]. A very fine exceptional copy of Fowles's breakthrough novel.

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.