The French Lieutenant's Woman

The French Lieutenant's Woman

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), by John Fowles, is a period novel inspired by the 1823 novel Ourika, by Claire de Duras, which Fowles translated into English in 1977 (and revised in 1994). Fowles was a great aficionado of Thomas Hardy, and, in particular, likened his heroine, Sarah Woodruff, to Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the protagonist of Hardy’s popular novel of the same name (1891).

In 1981, director Karel Reisz and writer Harold Pinter adapted the novel as a film, starring Meryl Streep. During 2006, it was adapted for the stage, by Mark Healy, in a version which toured the UK that year. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present.

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    In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.
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