Jasper Fforde worked in the film industry for 19 years where his varied career included the role of ‘focus puller’ on films such as Goldeneye, The Mask of Zorro and Entrapment. He had been writing purely for his own amusement for several years, but always harboured a dream of trading in his film career to become a full time writer.
After receiving 76 rejection letters from publishers, Jasper’s first novel The Eyre Affair was taken on by Hodder & Stoughton and published in July 2001. Set in 1985 in a world that is similar to our own, but with a few crucial – and bizarre – differences (Wales is a socialist republic, the Crimean War is still ongoing and the most popular pets are home-cloned dodos), The Eyre Affair introduces a remarkable heroine, a literary detective named Thursday Next. Thursday’s job includes spotting forgeries of Shakespeare’s lost plays, mending holes in narrative plotlines, and rescuing characters who have been kidnapped from literary masterpieces.
Over the last few years, Jasper has become a phenomenon across the world. All five novels in the Thursday Next series – The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten and First Among Sequels received effusive reviews and high praise from the press and booksellers. He has also acquired a huge reader fan base with some extraordinary stories of devotion – one couple in Nottingham have stolen Thursday’s name for their baby girl as a tribute to Jasper’s novels, a woman has just managed to secure the funding for the first PHD on his writing and Swindon Council have decided to name a series of roads after characters in the books.
Jasper also has become a very ‘collectable author’. Limited hardback editions of each book sell out months before publication, proof copies are selling for hundreds of pounds on ebay and fans avidly collect special “Thursday Next” postcards that Jasper places in a select number of books. Jasper has a huge web following with the sites www.thursdaynext.com and www.jasperfforde.com which are crammed full of information about Jasper and Thursday Next’s world (including Pete & Dave’s Dodo Emporium where you can purchase your own specially cloned pet). Both sites get over 200 visitors a day and one of the most popular pages is the ‘Fforum’ that fans worldwide can log on-to and chat about their favourite author.
In the US there has been a similar response to Jasper’s books. The Eyre Affair was an instant hit entering the New York Times Bestseller List in its first week of publication. In addition to achieving impressive sales figures in the US, Jasper was also named in Entertainment Weekly (the bible for all media news in the US) as one of the members of its 'It' list for 2002 – alongside the likes of Philip Pullman, Anna Patchett, Stephen Carter, Ian McEwan and Eminem.
Jasper’s novel SHADES OF GREY will be published in January 2010. He lives with his wife Mari and daughter Tabitha in Wales and has a passion for aviation.
Photo credit: Mari Roberts