Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. Colin Henry 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.
Series
Books
The Atlas of Holy Places and Sacred Sites
1996
The Sex Diary of a Metaphysician
1963
World Famous Cults and Fanatics
2004
The essential Colin Wilson
1986
The Mammoth Book of the History of Murder
2000
The Origins of Sexual Motivation
1963
Prasiveržimas
2003
The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries
1984
The Killers Among Us
Motives Behind Their Madness
1996
Beyond the Occult
1989
The Personality Surgeon
1986
Poltergeist!
1981
Access to Inner Worlds
The Story of Brad Absetz
1983
Rogue Messiahs
Tales of Self-Proclaimed Saviors
2000
Necessary Doubt
1964
الحاسة السادسة
2002
A Plague of Murder
1995
The Mammoth Book of True Crime 2
1990
Encyclopedia of Modern Murder 1962-82
1983
Pasiuntinys
1999
Battler Britton
2007
Evil
Spine-Tingling True Stories of Murder and Mayhem
2009
The Book of Time
1980
The Desert
1988
The World's Most Evil Murderers
2006
World Famous Unsolved Crimes
1992
The Age of Defeat
2005
الجنس والشباب الذكي
1966
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
1996
Lifeforce
2016
The Return of the Lloigor
1974
An End to Murder
A Criminologist's View of Violence Throughout History
2015
Qui a tué le président?
2011
G.I. Gurdjieff
The War Against Sleep
1980
Afterlife
1985
The Black Room
1971
Beyond Non-alignment
1965
New Pathways in Psychology
Maslow & the Post-Freudian Revolution
1972
World Famous True Love Stories
2005
Written in Blood
Detectives and Detection
1989
The Outsider
1956
Dreaming to Some Purpose
2004
The Ultimate Colin Wilson
Writings on Mysticism, Consciousness and Existentialism
2019
The Psychic Detectives
1984
The Quest for Wilhelm Reich
1981
Mysteries of the Universe
1997
Shadowland
2002
World Famous Crimes
1995
Illustrated True Crime
A Photographic Record
2002
Starseekers
1980
The Serial Killers
1990
The Craft of the Novel
1975
The Fortress
1989
Super Consciousness
The Quest for the Peak Experience
2007
The Occult
1971
Written in Blood
A History of Forensic Detection
1989
The Mammoth Book of Illustrated Crime
A Photographic History
2002
The Corpse Garden
The Crimes of Fred and Rose West
2003
The Books in My Life
1977
Poetry and Mysticism
1969
The Tower
1987
Strange
True Stories of the Mysterious and Bizarre
2009
C.G. Jung
Lord of the Underworld
1984
Witches
1981
The Space Vampires
1976
Order of Assassins
The Psychology of Murder
1972
WORLD S GREATEST TRUE CRIME
2004
Eagle and Earwig
1965
The Angry Years
The Rise and Fall of the Angry Young Men
2007
Voyage to a Beginning
A Preliminary Autobiography
1969
Crimes of Passion
The Thin Line Between Love and Hate
1996
The World of Violence
1963
Aleister Crowley
The Nature of the Beast
1987
Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs
1964
Manhunters
Criminal Profilers and Their Search for the World?s Most Wanted Serial Killers
2014
The Murder Casebook
1969
Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals
100,000 Years of Lost History
2006
The Janus Murder Case
1984
Scandal!
1986
The Tower
1988
The Strange Life of P.D. Ouspensky
1993
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved
2000
Adrift in Soho
1961
Manhunt
The Definitive History of Serial Murder Investigation
2006
Supernatural
Your Guide Through the Unexplained, the Unearthly and the Unknown
2011
Ritual in the Dark
1960
The Killers Among Us
Book II: Sex, Madness & Mass Murder
1995
The Strength to Dream
Literature and the Imagination
1962
The Book of Great Mysteries
1988
A Criminal History of Mankind
2006
The Magician
1990
World Famous serial Killer
1992
The Misfits
A Study of Sexual Outsiders
1988
The Directory of Possibilities
1981
A Casebook of Murder
1969
The Schoolgirl Murder Case
1974
The Mind Parasites
1967
The Glass Cage
1966
Strange Powers
1973
The Philosopher's Stone
1969
The Mammoth Book of the Supernatural
1991
The New Existentialism
1966
Serial Killer Investigations
1993
Unsolved Mysteries
Past and Present
1992
Rudolf Steiner
The Man and His Vision
1987
The God of the Labyrinth
1970
Mysteries
1978
The Mammoth Book of True Crime
1988
The Giant Book of the Supernatural
1994
Lingard
1970
Religion and the Rebel
1957
The Delta
1987
The Stature of Man
1959
Alien Dawn
An Investigation into the Contact Experience
1998
Jack the Ripper
Summing Up and Verdict
1987
