The Collector by John Fowles hardcover 4th printing 1963 Little, Brown and Co.

Description: John Fowles was born in Essex, England, in 1926. After serving as a lieutenant in the Royal Marines at the end of the war, he read French at Oxford. He took a job as a teacher in France for a while, and then went to live in Greece. He is now head of the English Department at a large London college, and lives with his wife in Hampstead. In his spare time he writes poetry and collects old books and old china. He is now working on his second novel, which is set in Greece. RARELY DOES A PUBLISHER INTRODUCE A NOVEL OF SUCH DEVASTATING POWER. WE INVITE YOU TO OPEN TO THE FIRST PAGE OF THE COLLECTOR. WE BELIEVE YOU WILL BE COMPELLED TO READ ON. He tells the story first - Frederick Clegg, an obscure little clerk and a collector of butterflies who one day goes on to net his finest specimen, Miss Miranda Grey, a soft, lovely twenty-year-old. In his colorless yet curiously expressive words, he tells of the months in which he stood by the office window and watched for the beautiful Miranda whenever she was home from art school. Then Frederick Clegg suddenly wins a fortune in a football pool and devises an ingenious way to make his dream come true: I thought, I can't get to know her in the ordinary way, but if she's with me, she'll see my good points, she'll under-stand. There was always the idea she would understand. I only wanted to do the best for her, make her happy and love me a bit. He buys a secluded country house and, when all preparations have been made, kidnaps Miranda from outside her apartment in London. The body of the novel concerns the two months during which Miranda is held prisoner • in the cellar of the house. The story is revealed first as he tells it, then as she secretly records it in a diary which begins: It's the seventh night. Deep down I get more and more frightened. It's only surface calm. Waking up is the worse thing. / wake and for a moment / think I'm at home or at Caroline's. Then it hits me. / don't care what he does. So long as / live. It's all the vile unspeakable things he could do. Power. It's so real. Try try try to escape. It's all I think of. A remarkable feat of imagination, THE COLLECTOR is a novel of disquieting perception whose cumulative effect is all too memorable. WHEN she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost every day sometimes, because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe. She and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot, often with young men, which of course I didn't like. When I had a free moment from the files and ledgers I stood by the window and used to look down over the road over the frosting and sometimes I'd see her. In the evening I marked it in my observations diary, at first with X, and then when I knew her name with M. I saw her several times outside too. I stood right behind her once in a queue at the public library down Crossfield Street. She didn't look once at me, but I watched the back of her head and her hair in a long pigtail. It was very pale, silky, like Burnet cocoons. All in one pigtail coming down almost to her waist, sometimes in front, sometimes at the back. Sometimes she wore it up. Only once, before she came to be my guest here, did I have the privilege to see her with it loose, and it took my breath away it was so beautiful, like a mermaid. Another time one Saturday off when I went up to the Natural History Museum I came back on the same train. She sat three seats down and sideways to me, and read a book, so I could watch her for thirty-five minutes. Seeing her always made me feel like I was catching a rarity, going up to it very careful, heart-in-mouth as they say. A Pale Clouded Yellow, for instance. I always thought of her like that, I mean words like elusive and sporadic, and very refined - not like the other ones, even the pretty ones. More for the real connoiseur. The year she was still at school I didn't know who she was, only how her father was Doctor Grey and some talk I overheard once at a Bug Section meeting about how her mother drank. I heard her mother speak once in a shop, she had a la-di-da voice and you could see she was the type to drink, too much make-up, etcetera. Well, then there was the bit in the local paper about the scholarship shed won and how clever she was, and her name as beautiful as herself, Miranda. So I knew she was up in London studying art. It really made a difference, that newspaper article. It seemed like we became more intimate, although of course we still did not know each other in the ordinary way. I can't say what it was, the very first time I saw her, I knew she was the only one. Of course I am not mad, I knew it was just a dream and it always would have been if it hadn't been for the money. I used to have daydreams about her, I used to think of stories where I met her, did things she admired, married her and all that. Nothing nasty, that was never until! what I'll explain later. She drew pictures and I looked after my collection (in my dreams). It was always she loving me and my collection, drawing and colouring them; working together in a beautiful modern house in a big room with one of those huge glass windows; meetings there of the Bug Section, where instead of saying almost nothing in case I made mistakes we were the popular host and hostess. She all pretty with her pale blonde hair and grey eyes and of course the other men all green round the gills. The only times I didn't have nice dreams about her being when I saw her with a certain young man, a loud noisy public-school type who had a sports car.

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End Time: 2025-01-28T19:18:49.000Z

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