Proceedings of the First International Colin Wilson Conference

Book excerpt: When the archive of the English philosopher and polymath Colin Wilson (1931–2013) was opened at the University of Nottingham, UK, in the summer of 2011, it was agreed among those present that a Conference should be arranged there to discuss his work. 2016 was mooted as an appropriate date coinciding with the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of his first (and still most famous) book, The Outsider; a book that has remained in print since publication day in May 1956 and now been translated into well over 30 languages. This volume contains the transcripts of the papers presented at that inaugural one-day conference on July 1, 2016. Experts, scholars and fans, from around the globe, gathered to hear and present papers on a variety of Wilson-related topics ranging from Existentialism to the Occult; from H.P. Lovecraft to Jack the Ripper; and from Science Fiction to Transcendental Evolution.