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 British
writer who portrays middle-class English life, its manners and characters,
from snobs and aristocrats to bums. Wilson was one of England's
first openly gay writers. Wilson published his first book at the
age of 36.
"He's so good-looking," Clarissa said, "and a charmer. He
hasn't done much, has he? It's awfully dangerous really for people
with brains to have money and good looks. They're practically
born to waste their talents."
(from Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, 1956)
Angus Wilson was born in Bexhill, East Sussex, into an elderly,
upper-middle-class family. His father, an inveterate gambler, was
Scottish and his mother came from South Africa. The family lived
in hotels and boarding houses and moved from place to place depending
upon his father's gambling luck. Wilson's siblings played transvestite
games in which he also participated. Later Wilson depicted his rootless
hotel life in the autobiographical work WILD GARDEN (1963). After
graduating from Merton College, Oxford, where he studied medieval
history and developed his acting talents, Wilson pursued a number
of jobs. He joined the British Library and worked there as a book
cataloguer, and eventually became deputy to the superintendent of
the Reading Room. Wilson worked at the library until 1955.
"The one thing that matters, Gerald, with the children," said
Inge, "is to be consistent. We want their little bodies to grow
straight and fine like the birch trees on the mountains. But that
is not so difficult. They are good strong little animals without
blemishes."
(from Anglo-Saxon Attitudes)
During World War II Wilson was a code breaker at Bletchley. He
first began to write in the 1940s on his psychotherapist's advice
after he had some kind of nervous breakdown. Wilson's paranoid fears
were not completely groundless - his sexual inclination made him
a target of gossips and he could run the risk of being blackmailed.
His first stories were published in Horizon. By the end of
1946 he recovered sufficiently to returned to the library, writing
during the weekends, and replacing books lost in the blitz during
working hours.
As a writer Wilson established his reputation with his two collections
of short stories, THE WRONG SET (1949) and SUCH DARLING DODOS AND
OTHER STORIES (1950). His first novel was HEMLOCK AND AFTER (1952),
which draws upon his homosexual experiences. During this period
he met Tony Garrett, another employee of the library. He was 16
years his junior. They settled in the Suffolk countryside and Wilson
spent the remainder of his life with him.
In ANGLO-SAXON ATTITUDES (1956) the protagonist realizes that he
has been involved in an archaeological hoax. THE OLD MEN AT THE
ZOO (1961) is a novel about a 'near future', that is not very different
from the present. In the story England is at war with an alliance
of European powers. Wilson's criticism of the middle-class did not
arouse excessive debate in the 1960s, a decade in which the "angry
young men" - such as Kingley Amis, John Osborne, and Alan Sillitoe
- dominated the literary scene. LATE CALL (1965) explores the spiritual
desolation of life in the English Midlands, and is narrated from
the perspective of a retired hotel manager. Sylvia Calvert, the
protagonist, comes to the New Town of Carshall, in which she finds
that people are strangers in their own life. NO LAUGHING MATTER
(1967) is a long, ambitious work that traces the fortunes of the
Matthews family from 1912 to 1967.
From 1966 to 1978 Wilson was a lecturer of English literature at
the University of East Anglia. He travelled much and participated
in all kinds of literary events, but although he had become a highly
visible character, his reputation faded in the late 1970s. His final
novel, SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE (1980), was a disappointment for
critics. In 1985 he left his Suffolk home and Thatcher's England
and moved to France. After returning to England Wilson received
financial support from a pension supplied by the Royal Literary
Fund and his friends. Wilson spent his last years in a nursing home
where he died of a stroke on May 31, 1991. Wilson's COLLECTED STORIES
appeared in 1987. He was knighted in 1980. Wilson was a fellow and
subsequently president of the Royal Society of Literature, chairman
of the National Book League and a member of the Arts Council. His
non-fiction works include biographies on Charles Dickens (1970)
and Rudyard Kipling (1970). As an essayist Wilson became familiar
with the readers of The Times Literary Supplement, Encounter,
and The Listener. In an essay in The New York Times
(March 1, 1981) he examined two works (The Decoding of Edwin
Drood by Charles Forsyte and The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
concluded by Leon Garfield), which dealt with Charles Dickens's
novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens died before he
could complete the story and it has puzzled many mystery readers
ever since. Wilson states that "endings" were not Dickens's strong
suit, but the two authors are in the right direction insofar that
they accept Jasper as the murderer.
For further reading: Angus Wilson by Peter Conradi (1997);
Angus Wilson: A Biography by Margaret Drabble (1996); Angus Wilson:
A Bibliography by J.H. Stape ( 1988); Angus Wilson: A Bibliography,
1947-1987 by John Henry Stape (1988); Angus Wilson by Averil Gardner
(1985); Critical Essays on Angus Wilson by Jay L. Halio (1985);
Angus Wilson: Mimic and Moralist by P. Faulkner (1980); Angus
Wilson by K.W. Gransden (1969)
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