The Outsider is a non-fiction book by Colin Wilson first published in 1956.
Through the works and lives of various artists - including H. G. Wells (Mind at the End of its Tether), Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Harley Granville-Barker (The Secret Life), Herman Hesse, T. E. Lawrence, Vincent Van Gogh, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Bernard Shaw, William Blake, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky and G. I. G...
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The Outsider is a non-fiction book by Colin Wilson first published in 1956.
Through the works and lives of various artists - including H. G. Wells (Mind at the End of its Tether), Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Harley Granville-Barker (The Secret Life), Herman Hesse, T. E. Lawrence, Vincent Van Gogh, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Bernard Shaw, William Blake, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky and G. I. Gurdjieff - Wilson explores the psyche of the Outsider, his effect on society, and society's effect on him.
The book is still published with enthusiastic comments from the likes of Edith Sitwell and Cyril Connolly adorning its cover (Connolly later admitted he hadn't read it). This reception - of his first book at the age of 24 - was a high critical watermark for Wilson, a reputation that sank as fast as it had rocketed. It is still, however, an insightful work of literary and philosophical criticism - a timeless preoccupation which perhaps...
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