Jasper Fforde

Fforde was born in London on 11 January 1961, the son of John Standish Fforde, the 24th Chief Cashier for the Bank of England.[2] He is a grandson of Polish political adviser Joseph Retinger, and a great-grandson of journalist E. D. Morel.[3]

Fforde was educated at the progressive Dartington Hall School. In his first jobs, he worked as a focus puller in the film industry. He worked on a number of films, including The Trial, Quills, GoldenEye, and Entrapment.[4]

Fforde published his first novel, The Eyre Affair, in 2001.

His published books include a series of novels starring the literary detective Thursday Next: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels, One of our Thursdays Is Missing and The Woman Who Died a Lot. The Eyre Affair had received 76 publisher rejections before its eventual acceptance for publication.[5]

Fforde won the Wodehouse prize for comic fiction in 2004 for The Well of Lost Plots.[6] Several streets in the Thames Reach housing development in Swindon have been named after characters in the series.[7]

The Big Over Easy (2005), set in the same alternative universe as the Next novels, is a reworking of his first written novel, which initially failed to find a publisher. Its original title was Who Killed Humpty Dumpty?[8] It was later titled Nursery Crime, which now refers to this series of books. These books describe the investigations of DCI Jack Spratt. The follow-up to The Big Over Easy, The Fourth Bear, was published in July 2006 and focuses on Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Shades of Grey, the first novel in a new series, was published December 2009 in the United States and January 2010 in the United Kingdom.

In November 2010 he produced The Last Dragonslayer, the first novel in a new series. It is a young-adult (YA) fantasy novel about a teenage orphan Jennifer Strange[9] which has now been adapted for television.[10] Two further books have been published in the series, The Song of the Quarkbeast (2011) and The Eye of Zoltar (2014). The series was originally planned as a trilogy.,[11] but a fourth book in the series was announced in 2014.[12] The current planned release date for the fourth book is late 2020 or early 2021.[13]

In 2009, Fforde published a story in the Welsh edition of Big Issue magazine (a magazine distributed by the homeless) called "We are all alike" (previously called "The Man with no face").[14] He also published "The Locked Room Mystery mystery" [sic] in The Guardian newspaper in 2007; this story remains available online.[15] The U.S. version of Well of Lost Plots features a bonus chapter (34b) called "Heavy Weather", a complete story in itself, featuring Thursday Next in her position as Bellman.

Fforde has an interest in aviation and owns and flies a Rearwin Skyranger.

• Thursday Next
  • The Eyre Affair (2001)
  • Lost in a Good Book (2002)
  • The Well of Lost Plots (2003)
  • Something Rotten (2004)
  • First Among Sequels (2007)
  • One of Our Thursdays is Missing (2011)
  • The Woman Who Died a Lot (2012)
• Nursery Crime Division
  • The Big Over Easy (2005)
  • The Fourth Bear (2006)
• Shades of Grey
  • Shades of Grey (Title on the cover), Shades of Grey 1: The Road to High Saffron (2009)
• The Dragonslayer
  • The Last Dragonslayer (2010)
  • The Song of the Quarkbeast (2011)
  • The Last Dragonslayer III: The Eye of Zoltar (2014)
• Standalone Novels
  • Early Riser (2018) [16]
  • The Constant Rabbit (2020) [17]

Originating with the Fforde Ffestival in September 2005,[18] the Fforde Ffiesta (cf. Ford Fiesta) is now an annual event built around Fforde's books and held in Thursday Next's home town of Swindon over the May bank holiday weekend.[19] People travel from as far away as Australia and the United States to take part in a wide range of events, including a re-enacting of gameshow Name That Fruit, Hamlet Speed Reading competitions and interactive performances of Richard III.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Jasper Fforde

• Official website
• The Fforde Ffiesta, annual fan gathering
• Jasper Fforde at British Council: Literature
• Jasper Fforde at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Jasper Fforde at IMDb
• Interview broadcast by the Lewis Burke Frumkes Radio Show in January 2010 (audio)