Colin Wilson

Author profile

born

June 26, 1931 in Leicester, The United Kingdom

gender

male

website

http://colinwilsonworld.co.uk/default.aspx

genre

Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction, Philosophy

influences

George Bernard Shaw, , George Gurdjieff, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund H ...more

About this author

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Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.

Wilson's works after The Outsider fo...more Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.

Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.(less)

combine editions
Books by Colin Wilson

Average rating: 3.92 · 7,310 ratings · 575 reviews · 286 distinct works

	The Outsider 4.15 avg rating — 589 ratings — published 1956 — 21 editions	My rating:
	The Occult 3.82 avg rating — 457 ratings — published 1988 — 14 editions	My rating:
	The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson, Gary Valentine Lachman, Gary Lachman 3.78 avg rating — 268 ratings — published 1967 — 12 editions	My rating:
	The Philosopher's Stone 3.87 avg rating — 152 ratings — published 1969 — 7 editions	My rating:
	Mysteries 4.12 avg rating — 115 ratings — published 1978 — 6 editions	My rating:
	A Criminal History of Mankind 3.98 avg rating — 112 ratings — published 1984 — 5 editions	My rating:
	The Space Vampires 3.41 avg rating — 135 ratings — published 1981 — 10 editions	My rating:
	The Mammoth Book of True Crime 3.71 avg rating — 101 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:
	Ritual in the Dark 3.72 avg rating — 93 ratings — published 1960 — 5 editions	My rating:
	The Tower 4.01 avg rating — 98 ratings — published 1987 — 5 editions	My rating:

More books by Colin Wilson…

Series by Colin Wilson

Spider World (6 books)
by Colin Wilson

3.96 avg rating — 262 ratings

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Quotes by Colin Wilson

“Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back.”
― Colin Wilson

17 people liked it

“The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.”
― Colin Wilson

16 people liked it

“I've always believed that a writer has got to remain an outsider.”
― Colin Wilson

15 people liked it

See all Colin Wilson's quotes »

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