University of Cambridge Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow Edward Wilson-Lee’s biography of prodigy and polymath Pico della Mirandola, THE GRAMMAR OF ANGELS – one of The Daily Telegraph’s best books of 2025 – will be published in North America next year by Pegasus Books. Publisher Jessica Case bought rights from agent Isobel Dixon, and will publish in hardback on 2 February 2027.
THE GRAMMAR OF ANGELS: The Life of a Renaissance Prodigy and his Search for a Philosophy of Everything tells how Pico dedicated his short, brilliant life to finding a philosophy that would settle the most important questions about human existence. This philosophy would, he believed, provide tools by which man could transcend his mortal limitations and join the ranks of the angels. Pico’s tempestuous life at the heart of the Renaissance was a testament to intellectual daring, a celebration of human dignity founded in the willingness to think the unthinkable, peering over the edge of the abyss in search of answers.
THE GRAMMAR OF ANGELS was first published in the UK by William Collins, garnering widespread acclaim, with rights also selling in Italy to Bollati Boringhieri, in Romania to ART, and in Korea to Kachi.
Photo: Raphael Gaillarde
‘We are delighted to have the opportunity to bring Wilson-Lee’s wondrous story of this Renaissance prodigy and polymath to American readers,’ said Jessica Case, Publisher of Pegasus Books. ‘Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s lust for knowledge and intellectual curiosity is infectious – THE GRAMMAR OF ANGELS is a reminder of the limitless and enduring magic of the human mind and power of language.’
‘I’m hugely excited that Pegasus will be bringing Pico to readers in the US,’ said Edward. ‘The blend of high drama in Renaissance Italy and troubling questions about the abilities of language to push at the boundaries of thought is one that I hope American readers will find both intriguing and strangely familiar.’
Isobel Dixon added: ‘Edward Wilson-Lee has a rare gift for taking readers deep into history, on journeys with fascinating figures, revealing once-famous or forgotten lives in new ways, and casting fresh light on our own contemporary predicaments as he does so. Pico della Mirandola is a perfect subject match and the book itself a marvel. It’s a joy that Jessica Case and Pegasus Books will now bring this story to North American readers.’
About Edward Wilson-Lee
Edward Wilson-Lee is 1596 Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches Renaissance Literature. After growing up in the US, Kenya, and Switzerland, he studied in London, New York, Oxford and Cambridge and lived in Zimbabwe, Mexico and the United States in between. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and two sons.
He has been awarded numerous Fellowships to support his work, including from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Foundation, and most recently a Guggenheim Fellowship. His first book was SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND and THE GRAMMAR OF ANGELS his most recent. THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize and was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography 2019, as was A HISTORY OF WATER in 2023. In addition to English-language publications in the UK and the US, his work has been translated into another 15 languages and he is regularly invited to festivals abroad.
Praise for THE GRAMMAR OF ANGELS
‘In this smart and rangy book, Wilson-Lee, a Cambridge don, paints a glorious portrait of the great 15th-century prince of learning, and teaches you more about magic than you thought you would ever know.’ – ‘The greatest books of 2025’, The Telegraph
‘A deeply fascinating, sui generis book by a brilliant scholar-writer, which uses the life story of a Renaissance prodigy to summon an angel-host of ideas, people and stories, all circling the question of language's ability to transcend the mortal realm’ – Robert Macfarlane
‘In Wilson-Lee’s hands, the most abstruse subjects become not so much transparent as feverishly exciting… such range and ambition is, after all, very Renaissance. It’s very Pico. It is also a joy to read.’ – James McConnochie, Sunday Times
Praise for Edward Wilson-Lee
‘The closest thing documented history can get to magic realism.’ — Simon Schama, Financial Times
‘Autodidact catnip. He’s a gifted chronicler of the odd, the interesting and the esoteric. Think non-fiction Umberto Eco.’ – Ian Sansom, The Spectator
‘Wilson-Lee offers a thrill on almost every page.’ – Irina Dumitrescu, New York Times
‘Wilson-Lee has the rare knack of re-visiting even the most familiar places as if they were being discovered for the first time. His prose is rich, fluent, absorbing. He guides his readers through a kaleidoscope of detail, interrelating various themes with consummate skill.’ – Fernando Cervantes
