Fowles, John

mostly typed, including c.7 brief notes and postcards, about his books including his struggle to complete The Magus ("...the conflict between my feeling about what a novel ought to be and the need to express my view on life is making it difficult for me to go on...") and his thoughts on The French Lieutenant's Woman ("...my only hope is that it sprawls in a reasonably Victorian way..."), the revised version of The Magus, Shipwreck, and films including of The French Lieutenant's Woman, also his resignation to reviews hostile to "Fowles and all his filthy para-fascist works” (29 June 1966) and related matters such as the importance of editing, international publishing rights, and the beginnings of the Booker Prize ("...the Booker Bros scheme for poor little rich writers...", 15 July 1968), as well as his health (including his stroke and his impotence) and personal life, c.97 pages, various sizes, 28 Church Row [Hampstead], Underhill Farm and Belmont House, Lyme Regis, 25 April 1963 to 18 October 1999, together with retained copies of 23 letters by Maschler to Fowles and other related letters and papers including a file on Eileen Warburton’s biography of Fowles, loose in a folder

Condition is described in the main body of the catalogue, where appropriate.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"...I realise my work-method, better called a non-work method, gets more peculiar as the years go by..."

The manuscript of The Collector reached Tom Maschler's desk in the summer of 1962: Maschler, only recently installed at Cape, immediately recognised its quality and accepted it for publication. Fowles was to remain with Cape throughout his working life. These letters show Fowles sharing intimate details of his personal life and reveal how deeply he relied on Maschler for his business affairs. Maschler took a particularly close interest in the film of The French Lieutenant's Woman (especially after the disastrous adaptation of The Magus in 1968), acting as an associate producer for the film, which was eventually directed by Karel Reisz with a screenplay by Harold Pinter and starred Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. It was a major critical and commercial success.

Tom Maschler
This lot is from the personal archive of Tom Maschler (b.1933), one of the leading figures of modern British publishing and identified by the Bookseller as one of the ten most influential figures in publishing of the twentieth century. As editorial director at Jonathan Cape from 1960, he was responsible for shaping the literary scene through the publication of authors including Joseph Heller, John Fowles, Doris Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Philip Roth, as well as many of the best English novelists to emerge in the 70s – Amis, Barnes, Chatwin, McEwan, Rushdie. Under his leadership Cape published some 15 Nobel laureates, and his forays into children’s books included bringing together Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake. The ten lots from his collection (lots 188-197) give significant insights into his varied career and literary interests, from Declaration, the collection of essays that made his name, to correspondence with two very different writers with whom he developed a particular rapport – John Fowles and Doris Lessing. They also include a small number of letters by an earlier generation of authors (Raymond Chandler and Malcolm Lowry) that were acquired by Maschler.