Fifteen-page early draft of his essay, "Hardy and the Hag

[Lyme Regis?], 1976. The manuscript comprises 15 quarto pages of typescript, and 3 pages of typed notes, all so thoroughly reworked (in both pen and pencil) in Fowles' hand that the original kernel of thought is transformed into a full-blown essay right before our eyes. Fowles inserts, deletes, adds paragraphs in the margins, and in three cases turns the sheet over and to write extensively on the versos. Even in this form the manuscript differs substantially from the published version which was published in Thomas Hardy: After Fifty Years (Macmillan, 1977, edited by Lance St. John Butler). A most interesting example of the novelist at work. Fowles manuscripts are very rare on the market, with most all his papers and journals having gone to Exeter in 1992 and the Harry Ransom Center in 1968-1993, and 1999. Fowles's major works include The Collector (1963), The Aristos (1964), The Magus (1965), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), Poems (1973), The Ebony Tower (1974), Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1982), and A Maggot (1985). That he and Hardy both resided in Dorset near Dorchester should not be lost on the student of either writer.