Via the laughingbone:

One of the authors that I used to seriously collect was Colin Wilson. At one point in my life, his books – especially the Outsider Series – were like maps, guiding me through unknown territories. I eagerly hunted down everything in and out of print. And in those dark pre-Amazon days, it was a real triumph of discovery to find a copy of the long out-of-print Beyond the Outsider, signed by Wilson, on the dusty lower shelf in an old bookstore. —the laughingbone

Via Michael Blowhard:

Here’s a great tale: the electrifying rise and almost instant fall of the British writer Colin (“The Outsider”) Wilson. Acclaimed as a brilliant talent while still in his early 20s, he became rich and famous very fast. But he was critically eviscerated within a couple of years and has been ignored (and/or treated like an embarassment) ever since.