Writer, aviator, focus puller: Fforde is a hard man to pin down. He was born in Gloucestershire in 1961 and spent thirteen years in the film industry progressing from mere clapper man in 1981 to a fully-fledged cameraman for The Mask of Zorro and Entrapment. He has always written for his own amusement but finally decided to jack in a film career and exchange it for literature in 2000.
Despite a somewhat shaky start with 76 rejection letters from publishers, Jasper’s first novel The Eyre Affair was hugely successful when published in 2001. As the title suggests the story feeds off Bronte’s famed protagonist but Jane is replaced by a new heroine: the remarkable literary detective 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. She also has a home-cloned pet Dodo.
Thursday has since starred in Lost in a Good Book (2002), The Well of Lost Plots (2003), and Something Rotten (2004). Fans eagerly await her return in the next installment in the series next year.
As well as the phenomenal success of the Thursday books, Fforde has also published two novels in his ‘Nursery Crimes’ series. The first of these, The Big Over Easy (2005), investigates the potential murder of poor old humpty dumpty and The Fourth Bear (2006) asks Goldilocks some pretty tough questions about what she was really doing in Daddy Bear’s house that morning.
Despite the time consuming job of being an immensely successful author, Fforde still manages to find the time to pilot a 1937 DeHavilland biplane and maintain his sprawling interactive website. Impressive.