Thomas Harris tipped his hat to Fowles in The Silence of the Lambs when he created the moth-loving antagonist Jame Gumb.

Fowles succeeds in humanizing his antagonist more than his protagonist.

Although Fowles had already drafted his more famous novel The Magus, he delayed its publication until he finished The Collector.

Fowles wrote in The Aristos that: “The actual evil in Clegg overcame the potential good in Miranda.”