Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, and Rene Magritte—among many other prominent surrealist artists—surely would not have enjoyed such success or notoriety in their lifetimes if it weren’t for Edward James. He kept money flowing into Dalí’s pockets and was the subject of Magritte’s famous painting La Reproduction Interdite. But James was more than a wealthy connoisseur of art. He was a poet, and ultimately an visionary in his own right, as evidenced by the construction of his vast and bizarre estate in Xilitla, Mexico: Las Pozas.

Award-winning biographer Margaret Hooks tells the strange, circuitous, and often tragic tale of this eccentric man and his surreal estate, captured exquisitely in photographs by Sally Mann, Michael Schuyt, Lourdes Almedia, and more.