Austin Osman Spare
The Life and Legend of London's Lost Artist; Revised & Expanded Edition

AOS is such an enigma Two years before the publication of the work, I had the opportunity to ask one of the leading authorities on Austin Osman Spare if he thought there would ever be a definitive biography of AOS . " I hope there never will be " was his passionate response. I was surprised and somew......more

Efforts to rescue Austin Osman Spare from obscurity have proceeded apace over the last decade or so. There’s been a plethora of exhibitions, catalogues and books devoted to the analysis of his art and contributions to contemporary occultism. Phil Baker’s new biography fills a welcome gap in the deve......more

Little is known about enigmatic artist Austin Osman Spare, and Phil Baker does an excellent job sorting through myth and reality in this biography. An unenviable task in some ways, Baker goes out of his way to point out inconsistencies and half-truths in the lore surrounding Spare, much of it propag......more

I’ve yet to read a bad book published by Strange Attractor and this is no exception, a perceptive and warm book about an astonishing figure who must be incredibly hard to write about. It has plenty of surprising cameos but I particularly enjoyed the references to Enoch Soames which seems wildly appr......more

I love a good biography and this one was truly a joy to read, although Spare remains a mystery, still......more