Born in Essex, England, in 1926, John Fowles was educated at Bedford School and at Oxford University. Following his studies in French at Oxford, Mr. Fowles taught in France and other places abroad before becoming a full-time writer. His first novel, The Collector, was an immediate bestseller—a popular as well as critical success—and he became widely recognized as a new writer of major importance. Reviewing The Collector in The New Republic, Honor Tracy noted: “… it does look as if the new England has brought forth a novelist at last.” Next came The Aristos, a book at the opposite end of the literary spectrum from The Collector—a self-portrait in ideas which further established Mr. Fowles as a writer of uncommon range and versatility. Now, with the arrival of The Magus, expectations for John Fowles’s second novel will be abundantly fulfilled.