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Biography

Angus Wilson was born in 1913 in Bexhill. His father was a gambler which means the family moved around and he spent some of his childhood in South Africa, where his mother was from. He was educated at Westminster School and Merton College, Oxford. He worked for the Foreign Office and then as deputy superintendent of the Reading Room of the British Museum. During the war he served as a codebreaker at Bletchley. He returned to the British Museum after the war, where he worked till 1955. He initially made his reputation with two short story collections before publishing his first novel, Hemlock and After, based on his own homosexual experiences. At this time he met Tony Garrett, another employee of the library and they became lifelong partners. He was lecturer in English literature at the university of East Anglia from 1966 to 1978. In 1985 he left Thatcher’s England to live in France but returned to die in 1991.

Books about Angus Wilson

S S Agarwalla: Angus Wilson and His Works
Peter Conradi: Angus Wilson
Margaret Drabble: Angus Wilson: A Biography (the standard biography)
Averil Gardner: Angus Wilson
K W Gransden: Angus Wilson
Jay L. Halio: Angus Wilson
J. H. Stape: Angus Wilson: a Bibliography, 1947-1987

Other links

Angus Wilson
Angus Wilson: From darling to dodo
The incredible sulk, Angus Wilson
A New Angus Wilson
Interview

Bibliography

1949 The Wrong Set and Other Stories
1950 Such Darling Dodos and Other Stories
1952 Emile Zola
1952 Hemlock and After
1953 For Whom the Cloche Tolls: a Scrap-Book of the Twenties (with Philippe Jullian)
1956 Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
1956 The Mulberry Bush, a Play in Three Acts
1957 A Bit Off the Map and Other Stories
1958 The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot
1961 The Old Men at the Zoo
1963 The Wild Garden or Speaking of Writing
1964 Late Call
1964 Tempo: The Impact of Television
1967 No Laughing Matter
1969 Death Dance: Twenty-Five Stories
1970 The World of Charles Dickens
1973 As If By Magic
1976 The Naughty Nineties
1977 The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work
1980 Setting the World on Fire
1983 Diversity and Depth in Fiction: Selected Critical Writings of Angus Wilson
1986 Reflections in a Writer’s Eye: Travel Pieces
1987 The Collected Stories of Angus Wilson