Angus Wilson

Wilson, Angus 

Born Aug. 11,1913, in Bexhill. British writer.

Wilson graduated from Oxford University. In 1949 he published his first collection of short stories, The Wrong Set, followed a year later by another, Such Darling Dodos. In these early works, Wilson demonstrates his brilliant talent for satire and his ability to look analytically at various social types, especially representatives of the middle class and the intelligentsia. His concern with the conflicts in modern bourgeois society is reflected in the novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956). In The Old Men at the Zoo (1961), an anti-utopian novel, Wilson deals with the dangerous tendencies inherent in the idea of an authoritarian state; but because of his propensity for the pathological and his excessive allegorism, he introduces modernistic elements into the novel that undermine the satirical effect. Another novel, No Laughing Matter (1967), depicts the demise of the British Empire in the 20th century.

Wilson also has published a work of literary history, The World of Charles Dickens (1970; Russian translation, 1975), and has written articles on problems of 19th- and 20th-century realism.

WORKS

Hemlock and After. London, 1952.
The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot. London, 1958.
Late Call. London, 1964.
As If by Magic. London, 1973.
In Russian Translation:
“To li karta nabekren’?” In Spasatel’. Moscow, 1973.

REFERENCES

Ivasheva, V. V. Angliiskaia literatura XX v. Moscow, 1967.
Allen, U. Traditsiia imechta. Moscow, 1970.
Halio, J. L. Angus Wilson. Edinburgh-London, 1964.
Gransden, K. W. Angus Wilson. London, 1969.

V. A. KHARITONOV