Colin Wilson, Spider World: the Delta

Nicolas Tredell (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1987

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Spider World: The Delta

(1987) is Colin Wilson’s eighteenth novel and the second in a science fantasy quartet that, as a whole, offers itself as Wilson’s evolutionary epic, his most extensive and elaborate imaginative work and his fullest fictional realization of his philosophical position. As Wilson recalls in his autobiography

Dreaming to Some Purpose

(2004), he originally wrote the first two volumes of the tetralogy as one novel running to a quarter of a million words, but his publisher felt it should be issued as two separate parts (335-6). The first volume,

Spider World: The Tower

(also 1987), had 398 pages and

Delta

, though 91 pages shorter, is still a substantial volume at 307 pages (Stanley (2011), 156-8). Whereas

Tower

was divided into three parts,

Delta

is divided into two,…

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2536 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "Spider World: the Delta". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 May 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23989, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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