Fforde was born in London in 1961.

Fforde initially worked in the film industry; he served as an assistant cameraman for such films as Quills, The Saint, and The Mask of Zorro.

He wrote when he could, finishing four rejected novels before he found a publisher for The Eyre Affair, the first of a series of novels set in an alternate time line and featuring Thursday Next, a literary detective and her interactions with criminal masterminds and characters from the world of books.

He has recently embarked on a series of mysteries based on nursery rhyme characters. The first novel in this series, The Big Over Easy (2005), focuses on the possible murder of Humpty Dumpty.

• The Eyre Affair (2001)
• The Well of Lost Plots (2002)
• Lost in a Good Book (2003)
• Something Rotten (2004)
• The Big Over Easy (2005)

• "Jasper Fforde" in Contemporary Authors Online

• Fforde Grand Central, the author's portal site with links to the author's other sites
• The Goliath Corporation, the official web site of the Goliath Corporation featured in the Thursday Next novels
• Nursery Crime, a site devoted to Fforde's nursery crime series
• SpecOps, a site focusing on Fforde's fictional Special Operations Network
• Swindon, containing photos of the city of Swindon as it appears in the Thursday Next novels
• Thursday Next, a site devoted to Thursday Next