Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.

The Outsider is the seminal work on alienation, creativity and the modern mind-set. First published over forty years ago, it made its youthful author England's most controversial intellectual. The Outsider its an individual engaged in an intense self-exploration—a person who lives at the edge, challenges cultural values and "stands for Truth." Born into a world without perspective, where others simply drift thru life, the Outsider creates his own set of rules and lives them in an unsympathetic environment. The relative handful of people who fulfilled Wilson's definition of the Outsider in the 1950s have now become a significant social force, making Wilson's vision more relevant today than ever. Through the works the lives of various artists—including Kafka, Camus, Eliot, Hemingway, Hesse, Lawrence, Van Gogh, Nijinsky, Shaw, Blake, Nietzsche and Dostoyevski—Wilson explores the psyche of the Outsider, his effect on society and society's effect on him. Wilson illuminates the struggle of those who seek not only the transformation of Self but also the transformation of society as a whole. The book is essential for everyone who shares his conviction that "a new religion is needed".