Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Early life [ ] Wilson was born on 26 June 1931 in, the first child of Arthur and Annetta Wilson. His father worked in a shoe factory.

At the age of eleven he attended Gateway Secondary Technical School, where his interest in science began to blossom. By the age of 14 he had compiled a multi-volume work of essays covering many aspects of science entitled A Manual of General Science. Desert storm game setup for pc cheat codes 2017. But by the time he left school at sixteen, his interests were already switching to literature. His discovery of 's work, particularly, was a landmark.

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He started to write stories, plays, and essays in earnest – a long 'sequel' to Man and Superman made him consider himself to be 'Shaw's natural successor.' After two unfulfilling jobs – one as a laboratory assistant at his old school – he drifted into the Civil Service, but found little to occupy his time. In the autumn of 1949, he was drafted into the Royal Air Force but soon found himself clashing with authority, eventually feigning homosexuality in order to be dismissed. Upon leaving he took up a succession of menial jobs, spent some time wandering around Europe, and finally returned to Leicester in 1951. There he married his first wife, (Dorothy) Betty Troop, and moved to London, where a son was born. But the marriage rapidly disintegrated as he drifted in and out of several jobs. During this traumatic period, Wilson was continually working and reworking the novel that was eventually published as Ritual in the Dark (1960).

He also met three young writers who became close friends –,. Another trip to Europe followed, and he spent some time in Paris attempting to sell magazine subscriptions. Returning to Leicester again, he met Joy Stewart – later to become his second wife and mother of their three children – who accompanied him to London. There he continued to work on Ritual in the Dark, receiving some advice from (no relation) – then deputy superintendent of the – and slept rough (in a sleeping bag) on to save money.

On Christmas Day, 1954, alone in his room, he sat down on his bed and began to write in his journal. He described his feelings as follows: It struck me that I was in the position of so many of my favourite characters in fiction: Raskolnikov, Malte Laurids Brigge, the young writer in Hunger: alone in my room, feeling totally cut off from the rest of society. It was not a position I relished.. Yet an inner compulsion had forced me into this position of isolation.

I began writing about it in my journal, trying to pin it down. And then, quite suddenly, I saw that I had the makings of a book. I turned to the back of my journal and wrote at the head of the page: 'Notes for a book The Outsider in Literature' The Outsider [ ]. Main article: published the 24-year-old Wilson's in 1956. The work examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works by various key literary and cultural figures – such as,,,,,,, and – and discusses Wilson's perception of in their work. The book became a best-seller and helped popularise existentialism in Britain. It has never been out of print and has been translated into more than thirty languages.

The back cover of the 2001 paperback edition reads: [In The Outsider] Wilson rationalized the psychological dislocation so characteristic of Western creative thinking into a coherent theory of alienation, and defined those affected by it as a type: the Outsider. Through the works of various artists. Wilson explored the psyche of the Outsider, his effect on society and society's on him. Nothing has happened in the past four decades that has made The Outsider any less relevant.

Career [ ] Non-fiction writing [ ] Wilson became associated with the ' of British literature. He contributed to, an anthology of manifestos by writers associated with the movement, and was also anthologised in a popular paperback sampler, Protest: The and the Angry Young Men.

Some viewed Wilson and his friends and as a sub-group of the 'Angries', more concerned with 'religious values' than with liberal or socialist politics. Critics on the left swiftly labelled them as fascist; commentator called them 'the law givers'. The success of The Outsider notwithstanding, Wilson's second book, Religion and the Rebel (1957), was universally panned by critics although Wilson himself acknowledged it to be a more comprehensive book than the first one. While 'The Outsider' was focused on documenting the subject of mental strain and near-insanity, Religion and the Rebel was focused on how to expand our consciousness and transform us into visionaries. Magazine published a review, headlined 'Scrambled Egghead', that pilloried the book. Undaunted, Wilson continued to expound his positive 'new' existentialism in the six philosophical books known as 'The Outsider Cycle', all written within the first ten years of his literary career.