The Collector

The Collector

Summary

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Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick is a loner who collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda, whom he watches from afar. When he wins the pools, he buys a remote Sussex country house and painstakingly works to make the cellar a comfortable prison. He then calmly abducts Miranda, believing that she will inevitably grow to love him in time if she just gets to know him.

Alone and desperate, Miranda must struggle to overcome her own prejudices and contempt if she is understand her captor and gain her freedom.

Taught and utterly compelling, Fowles' debut novel The Collector was an instant bestseller when it was published in 1963. It is regarded as one of the best thrillers of all time with one of the most terrifying villains to have ever been created on the page.

© John Fowles 1963 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Reviews

  • He has a magnificent narrative gift...brilliant
    Independent

About the author

John Fowles

John Fowles was born in 1926. He won international recognition with The Collector, his first published title, in 1963. He was immediately acclaimed as an outstandingly innovative writer of exceptional imaginative power, and this reputation was confirmed with the appearance of his subsequent works: The Aristos, The Magus, The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Ebony Tower, Daniel Martin, Mantissa, and A Maggot. John Fowles died in Lyme Regis in 2005. Two volumes of his Journals have recently been published; the first in 2003, the second in 2006.
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