Britain's first homegrown existentialist star, he failed to follow up the huge success of his 1956 book, The OutsiderFor a few dazzling months, Colin Wilson, who has died aged 82, was taken at his own valuation in his diary as "the major literary genius of our century", a writer destined to be "Plato's ideal sage and king". The phenomenal reviews and sales of his first book, The Outsider (1956), led him to be seen as a potential saviour of the human spirit, a thinker who might find a way through the spiritual nullity of the postwar years.The book remains extraordinary, more for its reach than its grasp. It was an attempt to map a single, negotiable path of mysticism from the span of recent western art and philosophy. Wilson looked for the path through case studies of the agonies and ecstasies of thinkers, artists and men of action including Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, Vaslav Nijinsky, Vincent van Gogh, Hermann Hesse and Lawrence of Arabia. He condensed them into a single type, "the Outsider", a questing spirit straddled between devastating experiences of nothingness and moments of the highest insight."Our life in modern society is a repetition of Van Gogh's problem," Wilson said, "the day-to-day struggle for intensity that disappears overnight, interrupted by human triviality and endless pettiness." The book was excitingly written, with a sense of revelation. The failing, which took longer to emerge, was that it oversimplified... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2013-12-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
Felicity Bryan, founder of Felicity Bryan Associates and one of Britain’s most respected literary agents, died June 21 of cancer. She was 74. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-06-22 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Illustrators Dapo Adeola and Ken Wilson-Max have said the industry could be on the cusp of change over diversity but it requires more black people in sales teams and greater transparency on race. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-16 15:01:56 UTC ]
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Children's author Stella Pevsner, widely known for her middle grade and YA novels that often addressed difficult subjects, died on June 11 at age 98. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-06-16 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Dapo Adeola will be speaking to Ken Wilson-Max on Instagram Live this week about their experiences as two of just four black British illustrators currently being published in children's books. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-15 09:32:54 UTC ]
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Veteran book publishing copy editor and actor India Cooper died on May 17 in Madison, Ind., after a brief illness. She was 67. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-06-02 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Children's book author and journalist Karen Blumenthal, widely recognized for her works of narrative nonfiction addressing complicated subject matters, died on May 19 in her hometown of Dallas, following a heart attack; she was 61. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-21 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Thomas Low, co-founder and CEO of multicultural children's publishing house Lee & Low Books, has died of cancer, his family confirmed; he was 78. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-19 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Longtime literary agent and left-wing activist Frances Goldin died May 16. She was 95. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-18 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Bill Shannon, contracts director for the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, died May 9 after an extended illness from complications of kidney cancer. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-13 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Irv Myers, a respected publishing logistics expert for such companies as Waldenbooks, Rowman & Littlefield/NBN, and New Leaf, died May 7 of a heart attack. He was 68. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-11 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Marian Wood, a veteran editor and former v-p and publisher of an eponymous imprint at G.P. Putnam's Sons, died over the weekend. Penguin Random House called Wood's time in the business, which began in the 1970s, "one of the most illustrious careers in publishing." Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-08 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Jeremy Trafford, who has died aged 85 after contracting Covid-19, was a publisher, teacher and writer. I met him in the late 1970s, while supply teaching at the London Oratory school, in west London, where he taught English literature in the sixth form. He was a brilliant teacher, who inspired... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-05-05 11:07:04 UTC ]
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Writer and children's book author Robert Kimmel Smith, widely known for such popular middle grade novels as 'Chocolate Fever' and 'The War with Grandpa,' died on April 18 at his home in Manhattan; he was 89. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-04-28 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Canadian children's book author Jean Little, internationally recognized for her novels featuring characters who realistically deal with adversity, died on April 6 at Hospice Wellington in Guelph, Ontario. She was 88. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-04-07 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Faxel, who joined Midwest Tape's Dreamscape Media in 2014 and quickly took the helm as publisher, died unexpectedly on March 30. She was 55. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-04-06 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Award-winning author-illustrator Tomie dePaola, widely known for his stylized folk-art illustrations and vast catalogue of popular picture books, died March 30 of complications from surgery following a fall. He was 85. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-03-31 04:00:00 UTC ]
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My mother, Lilian Mohin, who has died aged 81, was a co-founder in the 1970s of the London-based feminist publishing house Onlywomen Press, for which she wrote and edited works of literature and poetry. Lilian set up Onlywomen Press in 1974 with Sheila Shulman and Deborah Hart – and was a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-03-13 16:34:45 UTC ]
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Susanne Woods, founder and publisher of needle and sewing crafts publisher Lucky Spool Media, died February 19, 2020, of complications from metastatic breast cancer. She was 47. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-03-11 04:00:00 UTC ]
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HQ has acquired the first adult memoir from children’s author Anna Wilson, billed as a “searing” account of autism and ageing. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-05 06:36:10 UTC ]
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Award-winning journalist, poet, and rising children's book author Gail Shepherd died of complications from a brain tumor on February 24 in Lake Worth, Fla.; she was 62. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-03-05 05:00:00 UTC ]
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