English novel since World War II has long been regarded as “stagnation” and “regression.” The novelists who produced their major works in this period have often been criticized in that they failed to succeed the “Great Tradition” of the Victorian age and lost the glamour of their modernist predecessors. These low accomplishments of English novel in the second half of the twentieth century are generally ascribed to the English personality which is against any change or experiments and their aesthetic taste which is congenial to the realistic novels. On the contrary, there came voices, mostly from the English scholars and critics, advocating that the lack of experiments would not inevitably mean the stagnation and regression. Others presented their ideas maintaining that English novels since the 1960s did not lack innovation and experimentation. In this debate over the international status of English novel, John Fowles draws a peculiar attention from those professionals who rated high the accomplishments of modern English novelists. John Fowles is an existential thinker in his morality or vision of life. As for his art, Fowles can be well discussed in terms of both a traditional realist and an experimental metafitionist. Though the novelist himself often reveals his antipathy toward experimental modern fiction, his novels undoubtedly involve certain facets of postmodern metafictional experimentation. Ever since his first novel The Collector appeared, the works of the critics on Fowles are mostly revolving around these two themes: “exsitentialism” and “metafiction.” Starting from the mid of the 1990s, there came a new trend in the study ofFowles``s life and art. It is in general an effort to illuminate the real facet of John Fowles as a naturalist, focusing on his non-fiction writings since 1970. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the diverse and contradictory views of the critics regarding modern English novel and to examine Fowles``s position in the literary history of the twentieth century. For this purpose, the main stream of Fowles scholarship for over 30 years along with the new trend in the mid 1990s will be discussed. Biological informations about nature-friendly life style of Fowles and bibliography research will be applied.