Lee R. Edwards hy bother to review yet again a book which has been as widely and as favorably reviewed as The French Lieutenant's Woman? 1 If the purpose of a review is to inform the public about the existence and con tents of a new book and to encourage people either to read or to ignore it, then who needs one more notice of a novel which, as I write, has been on The New York Times Book Review's best seller list for 30 weeks? In part, the answer must run, because the spectacle of a succ? s d'estime which is also a popular success provokes speculation. What happy combina tion of intelligence and intuition caused Fowles to produce this book at this time? And why, given the book that it is, should it win such critical and popular acclaim? Who are all the readers? Having been moved, in a time of tight money, to scatter $7.95 in the name of literature, were they pleased with what they found? And did they find in the novel what the reviews had led them to believe was there? There is food here for analysis, food for some voguey interdisciplinary doctoral dissertation in sociology and literature. xJohn Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1969. $7.95.