By Colin Stanley

The former ‘Angry Young Man’ Colin Wilson, who achieved overnight success and fame in 1956 with his iconic study of alienation and transcendence The Outsider, and has gone on to produce over 170 books, including the classic study The Occult, is 80 on June 26th. Colin Stanley, his bibliographer, one of his many publishers, and editor of Around the Outsider, a celebratory collection of essays released by O Books on May 27th, looks back on Colin Wilson’s  remarkable life and assesses his work to date.

Colin Wilson was born on June 26, 1931 in the East Midlands city of Leicester—the first child of Arthur and Annetta Wilson. When eleven he attended Gateway Secondary Technical School, where his interest in science began to blossom. By the age of fourteen he had compiled a multi-volume work of essays covering all aspects of science entitled A Manual of General Science. But by the time he left school at sixteen, his interests were already switching to literature. His discovery of George Bernard Shaw’s work, particularly Man and Superman, was an important landmark. He started to write stories, plays, and essays in earnest—a long “sequel” to Man and Superman made him consider himself to be More >