The Collector
Frederick Clegg is a lonely, socially stunted clerk who wins a small fortune on the football pools and uses it to buy a remote country house, a van, and the chloroform he needs to abduct Miranda Grey, an art student he has been obsessively watching from a distance. He tells himself he only wants her to learn to love him; she tells herself she only needs to stay alive long enough to escape. John Fowles's 1963 debut, alternating Clegg's flat, self-justifying narration with Miranda's diary from the cellar, is a chilling, unnervingly patient study of entitlement, class resentment, and the gap between romance as performed and love as actually practiced, and it is widely credited with helping to shape the modern psychological thriller.
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Quiet London clerk Frederick Clegg wins the football pools and uses the money to buy a remote Sussex house with a soundproof cellar, where he keeps a young art student named Miranda Grey he has loved from a distance.
The Collector was written by John Fowles and published in 1963. It was Fowles's debut novel, and it has remained continuously in print as a defining literary thriller and influence on later kidnapping novels.
Yes. William Wyler directed a 1965 film adaptation starring Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar. Both leads were nominated for Academy Awards. The film is widely considered a faithful adaptation.
The Collector is 288 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Collector takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
The Collector is a standalone novel by John Fowles, not part of a series.
The Collector is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
