The Screenplay of The French Lieutenant's Woman. Based on the novel by John Fowles.

Uncorrected Proof. 8vo. Pp. xvi, 104. Publisher's staple-bound brick red wraps, printed in black. With a Foreword by John Fowles.

Harold Pinter's screenplay for the 1981 drama The French Lieutenant's Woman, based on John Fowles' novel of love and transgression set in Victorian England. In the novel, Fowles narrates the story from both a mid-nineteenth century and a modern point of view. In adapting it for the screen, Pinter ingeniously intertwines a love affair between the leads in a movie adaptation of the Victorian lovers' tale, thus creating a film-within-a-film, and preserving the novel's intriguing dual ending.

Pinter's script is not "a mere 'version' of my novel," writes Fowles in his foreword, "but the blueprint of a brilliant metaphor for it," that stands admirably on its own as a skilful, dramatic, and original work. Directed by Karel Reisz, and starring Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, and Leo McKern, the film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Pinter's nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.