Short description
Set in Lyme Regis in 1867, 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' tells the story of a woman wronged, depicted against an unrelenting Victorian England.
Long description
Of all John Fowles' novels The French Lieutenant's Woman received the most universal acclaim and today holds a very special place in the canon of post-war English literature. From the god-like stance of the nineteenth-century novelist that he both assumes and gently mocks, to the last detail of dress, idiom and manners, his book is an immaculate recreation of Victorian England. Not only is it the epic love story of two people of insight and imagination seeking escape from the cant and tyranny of their age, The French Lieutenant's Woman is also a brilliantly sustained allegory of the decline of the twentieth-century passion for freedom.
Review
A brilliant success... It is a passionate piece of writing as well as an immaculate example of storytelling Financial Times Compulsively readable Irish Times A splendid, lucid, profoundly satisfying work of art, a book which I want almost immediately to read again New Statesman Brilliant...an artist of great imaginative power Sunday Times