John Fowles was one of Britain's most respected authors

The French Lieutenant's Woman author John Fowles has died aged 79.

Fowles died at his home in Lyme Regis, Dorset on Saturday after battling a long illness, his publisher said.

Born in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, Fowles' writing career spanned more than 40 years and also included works such as The Magus and The Collector.

The French Lieutenant's Woman, which became an Oscar-nominated film in 1981 starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, remains his arguably most famous work.

The novel was first published in 1969.

It was seen as a new kind of writing, a historical novel, with layers of truth, fantasy and self-awareness.

The French Lieutenant's Woman has been described as a pastiche of a historical romance, juxtaposing Victorian characters with the commentary of the author writing in the 1960s.

Fowles was a boarder at Bedford School before completing compulsory military service between 1945 and 1947.

I know I have a reputation as a cantankerous man of letters and I don't try and play it down

He went on to Oxford University, where he gained a degree in French.

But he was a teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1963 after The Collector won critical acclaim and commercial success.

His tale of a butterfly collector who kidnaps a woman in London was made into a film starring Terence Stamp two years later.

Fowles moved to Lyme Regis in 1968, which was also the setting for The French Lieutenant's Woman.

In the same year he adapted his 1966 novel The Magus, a tale of intrigue on a Greek island, for the big screen.

The book, which achieved cult status in the US, was reportedly inspired by his time working in a college on the island of Spetsai.

But the film version featuring Michael Caine was widely regarded as a flop, with Fowles himself describing it as "a disaster all the way down the line".

Fowles once remarked he had been trying to escape his upbringing .

"No-one in my family had any literary interests or skills at all," he said.

"I seemed to come from nowhere. When I was a young boy my parents were always laughing at 'the fellow who couldn't draw' - Picasso. Their crassness horrified me."

The author is survived by his second wife, Sarah. His first wife Elizabeth died in 1990.

Fowles, who had a stroke in 1988, suffered from heart problems.

He was known to be a fiercely private person and stayed as a virtual recluse in his house overlooking the sea.

He gave one of his last interviews to The Guardian in 2003 in which he complained of being "persecuted" by his readers.

"I know I have a reputation as a cantankerous man of letters and I don't try and play it down," he said.

"But I'm not really. I partly propagated it.

"A writer, well-known, more-or-less living on his own, will be persecuted by his readers.

"They want to see you and talk to you. And they don't realise that very often that gets on one's nerves."

(Agencies)

pastiche : a work of art that imitates the style of some previous work（模仿作品）

upbringing : raising someone to be an accepted member of the community（撫育，教養）