In the prologue to his 1986 book A Maggot, John Fowles announces, "What follows may seem like a historical novel; but it is not" (n. pag.). The book may not be based on historical events, but Fowles has gone to considerable lengths to make it "seem" historical, narrating an eighteenth-century story by means of supposed court transcripts and archaic language, even inserting between chapters some facsimile pages excerpted from actual issues of The Gentleman's Magazine from 1736. At the end of A Maggot, Fowles invites readers to imagine that the novel's central female character went on to become the historical mother of Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers. In a similar way, chapter-by-chapter epigraphs in The French Lieutenant's Woman add a sense of documentary realism to that novel, a nineteenth-century story whose ending invites readers to imagine that Sarah Woodruff, the title character, has become one of the historical "stunners" adopted as models by the Pre-Raphaelite Brother hood (or PRB) (Wood 26). The similarities make The French Lieutenant's Woman also seem like a historical novel, though it is not. The book does, however, draw on historical material, and whether readers recognize that fact will affect how they respond when they read it--particularly if a reader is well described by either of the labels "general reader" or "elite reader," based on a relatively low or high level of historical awareness. Surely most of Fowles's many readers possess only general knowledge about the nineteenth century, elite readers, on the other hand, those who know something about the Victorian figures introduced as characters, can hear additional, historical resonances and will respond differently to the novel.
