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G. K. Chesterton

November 24, 2023

Not to be confused with A. K. Chesterton.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton KC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer,[2] philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic.

G. K. Chesterton

KC*SG
Chesterton in 1909
BornGilbert Keith Chesterton
(1874-05-29)29 May 1874
Kensington, London, England
Died14 June 1936(1936-06-14) (aged 62)
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England
Resting placeRoman Catholic Cemetery, Beaconsfield
Occupation
  • Journalist
  • novelist
  • essayist
  • poet
EducationUniversity College London
Period1900–1936
GenreEssays, fantasy, Christian apologetics, Catholic apologetics, mystery, poetry
Literary movementCatholic literary revival[1]
Notable works
Spouse
​
(m. 1901)​
Relatives
Signature

Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown,[3] and wrote on apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man.[4][5] Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an orthodox Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting from high church Anglicanism. Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman and John Ruskin.[6]

He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox".[7] Of his writing style, Time observed: "Whenever possible, Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."[4] His writings were an influence on Jorge Luis Borges, who compared his literature with that of Edgar Allan Poe.[8]

Biography edit

Early life edit

 
Chesterton at the age of 17

Chesterton was born in Campden Hill in Kensington, London, the son of Edward Chesterton (1841–1922), an estate agent, and Marie Louise, née Grosjean, of Swiss French origin.[9][10][11] Chesterton was baptised at the age of one month into the Church of England,[12] though his family themselves were irregularly practising Unitarians.[13] According to his autobiography, as a young man he became fascinated with the occult and, along with his brother Cecil, experimented with Ouija boards.[14] He was educated at St Paul's School, then attended the Slade School of Art to become an illustrator. The Slade is a department of University College London, where Chesterton also took classes in literature, but he did not complete a degree in either subject. He married Frances Blogg in 1901; the marriage lasted the rest of his life. Chesterton credited Frances with leading him back to Anglicanism, though he later considered Anglicanism to be a "pale imitation". He entered in full communion with the Catholic Church in 1922.[15] The couple were unable to have children.[16][17]

A friend from schooldays was Edmund Clerihew Bentley, inventor of the clerihew, a whimsical four-line biographical poem. Chesterton himself wrote clerihews and illustrated his friend's first published collection of poetry, Biography for Beginners (1905), which popularised the clerihew form. He became godfather to Bentley's son, Nicolas, and opened his novel The Man Who Was Thursday with a poem written to Bentley.

Career edit

In September 1895, Chesterton began working for the London publisher George Redway, where he remained for just over a year.[18] In October 1896 he moved to the publishing house T. Fisher Unwin,[18] where he remained until 1902. During this period he also undertook his first journalistic work, as a freelance art and literary critic. In 1902 the Daily News gave him a weekly opinion column, followed in 1905 by a weekly column in The Illustrated London News, for which he continued to write for the next thirty years.

Early on Chesterton showed a great interest in and talent for art. He had planned to become an artist, and his writing shows a vision that clothed abstract ideas in concrete and memorable images. Even his fiction contained carefully concealed parables. Father Brown is perpetually correcting the incorrect vision of the bewildered folks at the scene of the crime and wandering off at the end with the criminal to exercise his priestly role of recognition, repentance and reconciliation. For example, in the story "The Flying Stars", Father Brown entreats the character Flambeau to give up his life of crime: "There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don't fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I've known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime."[19]

 
Caricature by Max Beerbohm

Chesterton loved to debate, often engaging in friendly public disputes with such men as George Bernard Shaw,[20] H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow.[21][22] According to his autobiography, he and Shaw played cowboys in a silent film that was never released.[23] On 7 January 1914 Chesterton (along with his brother Cecil and future sister-in-law Ada) took part in the mock-trial of John Jasper for the murder of Edwin Drood. Chesterton was Judge and George Bernard Shaw played the role of foreman of the jury.[24]

Chesterton was a large man, standing 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) tall and weighing around 20 stone 6 pounds (130 kg; 286 lb). His girth gave rise to an anecdote during the First World War, when a lady in London asked why he was not "out at the Front"; he replied, "If you go round to the side, you will see that I am."[25] On another occasion he remarked to his friend George Bernard Shaw, "To look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England." Shaw retorted, "To look at you, anyone would think you had caused it."[26] P. G. Wodehouse once described a very loud crash as "a sound like G. K. Chesterton falling onto a sheet of tin".[27] Chesterton usually wore a cape and a crumpled hat, with a swordstick in hand, and a cigar hanging out of his mouth. He had a tendency to forget where he was supposed to be going and miss the train that was supposed to take him there. It is reported that on several occasions he sent a telegram to his wife Frances from an incorrect location, writing such things as "Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" to which she would reply, "Home".[28] Chesterton himself told this story, omitting, however, his wife's alleged reply, in his autobiography.[29]

In 1931, the BBC invited Chesterton to give a series of radio talks. He accepted, tentatively at first. However, from 1932 until his death, Chesterton delivered over 40 talks per year. He was allowed (and encouraged) to improvise on the scripts. This allowed his talks to maintain an intimate character, as did the decision to allow his wife and secretary to sit with him during his broadcasts.[30][page needed] The talks were very popular. A BBC official remarked, after Chesterton's death, that "in another year or so, he would have become the dominating voice from Broadcasting House."[31] Chesterton was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1935.[32]

Chesterton was part of the Detection Club, a society of British mystery authors founded by Anthony Berkeley in 1928. He was elected as the first president and served from 1930 to 1936 till he was succeeded by E. C. Bentley.[33]

Death and veneration edit

 
Telegram sent by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII) on behalf of Pope Pius XI to the people of England following the death of Chesterton

Chesterton died of congestive heart failure on 14 June 1936, aged 62, at his home in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. His last words were a greeting of good morning spoken to his wife Frances. The sermon at Chesterton's Requiem Mass in Westminster Cathedral, London, was delivered by Ronald Knox on 27 June 1936. Knox said, "All of this generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton."[34] He is buried in Beaconsfield in the Catholic Cemetery. Chesterton's estate was probated at £28,389, equivalent to £2,052,132 in 2021.[35]

Near the end of Chesterton's life, Pope Pius XI invested him as Knight Commander with Star of the Papal Order of St Gregory the Great (KC*SG).[31] The Chesterton Society has proposed that he be beatified.[36]

Writing edit

Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays (mostly newspaper columns), and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, and Catholic theologian[37][38] and apologist, debater, and mystery writer. He was a columnist for the Daily News, The Illustrated London News, and his own paper, G. K.'s Weekly; he also wrote articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica, including the entry on Charles Dickens and part of the entry on Humour in the 14th edition (1929). His best-known character is the priest-detective Father Brown,[3] who appeared only in short stories, while The Man Who Was Thursday is arguably his best-known novel. He was a convinced Christian long before he was received into the Catholic Church, and Christian themes and symbolism appear in much of his writing. In the United States, his writings on distributism were popularised through The American Review, published by Seward Collins in New York.

Of his nonfiction, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1906) has received some of the broadest-based praise. According to Ian Ker (The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845–1961, 2003), "In Chesterton's eyes Dickens belongs to Merry, not Puritan, England"; Ker treats Chesterton's thought in chapter 4 of that book as largely growing out of his true appreciation of Dickens, a somewhat shop-soiled property in the view of other literary opinions of the time. The biography was largely responsible for creating a popular revival for Dickens's work as well as a serious reconsideration of Dickens by scholars.[39]

Chesterton's writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour. He employed paradox, while making serious comments on the world, government, politics, economics, philosophy, theology and many other topics.[40][41]

T. S. Eliot summed up his work as follows:

He was importantly and consistently on the side of the angels. Behind the Johnsonian fancy dress, so reassuring to the British public, he concealed the most serious and revolutionary designs—concealing them by exposure ... Chesterton's social and economic ideas ... were fundamentally Christian and Catholic. He did more, I think, than any man of his time—and was able to do more than anyone else, because of his particular background, development and abilities as a public performer—to maintain the existence of the important minority in the modern world. He leaves behind a permanent claim upon our loyalty, to see that the work that he did in his time is continued in ours.[42]

Eliot commented further that "His poetry was first-rate journalistic balladry, and I do not suppose that he took it more seriously than it deserved. He reached a high imaginative level with The Napoleon of Notting Hill, and higher with The Man Who Was Thursday, romances in which he turned the Stevensonian fantasy to more serious purpose. His book on Dickens seems to me the best essay on that author that has ever been written. Some of his essays can be read again and again; though of his essay-writing as a whole, one can only say that it is remarkable to have maintained such a high average with so large an output."[42]

In 2022, a three-volume bibliography of Chesterton was published, listing 9000 contributions he made to newspapers, magazines, and journals, as well as 200 books and 3000 articles about him.[43]

Contemporaries edit

"Chesterbelloc" edit

See also: G. K.'s Weekly
 
George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, and G. K. Chesterton

Chesterton is often associated with his close friend, the poet and essayist Hilaire Belloc.[44][45] George Bernard Shaw coined the name "Chesterbelloc"[46] for their partnership,[47] and this stuck. Though they were very different men, they shared many beliefs;[48] in 1922, Chesterton joined Belloc in the Catholic faith, and both voiced criticisms of capitalism and socialism.[49] They instead espoused a third way: distributism.[50] G. K.'s Weekly, which occupied much of Chesterton's energy in the last 15 years of his life, was the successor to Belloc's New Witness, taken over from Cecil Chesterton, Gilbert's brother, who died in World War I.

In his book On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters, Belloc wrote that "Everything he wrote upon any one of the great English literary names was of the first quality. He summed up any one pen (that of Jane Austen, for instance) in exact sentences; sometimes in a single sentence, after a fashion which no one else has approached. He stood quite by himself in this department. He understood the very minds (to take the two most famous names) of Thackeray and of Dickens. He understood and presented Meredith. He understood the supremacy in Milton. He understood Pope. He understood the great Dryden. He was not swamped as nearly all his contemporaries were by Shakespeare, wherein they drown as in a vast sea – for that is what Shakespeare is. Gilbert Chesterton continued to understand the youngest and latest comers as he understood the forefathers in our great corpus of English verse and prose."[51]

Wilde edit

In his book Heretics, Chesterton said this of Oscar Wilde: "The same lesson [of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker] was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw."[52] More briefly, and with a closer approximation to Wilde's own style, he wrote in his 1908 book Orthodoxy concerning the necessity of making symbolic sacrifices for the gift of creation: "Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde."

Shaw edit

Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw were famous friends and enjoyed their arguments and discussions. Although rarely in agreement, they each maintained good will toward, and respect for, the other.[53] In his writing, Chesterton expressed himself very plainly on where they differed and why. In Heretics he writes of Shaw:

After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby.[54]

Views edit

Advocacy of Catholicism edit

Chesterton's views, in contrast to Shaw and others, became increasingly focused towards the Church. In Orthodoxy he wrote: "The worship of will is the negation of will ... If Mr Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, 'Will something', that is tantamount to saying, 'I do not mind what you will', and that is tantamount to saying, 'I have no will in the matter.' You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that it is particular."[55]

Chesterton's The Everlasting Man contributed to C. S. Lewis's conversion to Christianity. In a letter to Sheldon Vanauken (14 December 1950),[56] Lewis called the book "the best popular apologetic I know",[57] and to Rhonda Bodle he wrote (31 December 1947)[58] "the [very] best popular defence of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man". The book was also cited in a list of 10 books that "most shaped his vocational attitude and philosophy of life".[59]

Chesterton's hymn "O God of Earth and Altar" was printed in The Commonwealth and then included in the English Hymnal in 1906.[60] Several lines of the hymn appear in the beginning of the song "Revelations" by the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden on their 1983 album Piece of Mind.[61] Lead singer Bruce Dickinson in an interview stated "I have a fondness for hymns. I love some of the ritual, the beautiful words, Jerusalem and there was another one, with words by G. K. Chesterton O God of Earth and Altar – very fire and brimstone: 'Bow down and hear our cry'. I used that for an Iron Maiden song, "Revelations". In my strange and clumsy way I was trying to say look it's all the same stuff."[62]

Étienne Gilson praised Chesterton's book on Thomas Aquinas: "I consider it as being, without possible comparison, the best book ever written on Saint Thomas ... the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas Aquinas, and who, perhaps, have themselves published two or three volumes on the subject, cannot fail to perceive that the so-called 'wit' of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame."[63]

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the author of 70 books, identified Chesterton as the stylist who had the greatest impact on his own writing, stating in his autobiography Treasure in Clay, "the greatest influence in writing was G. K. Chesterton who never used a useless word, who saw the value of a paradox, and avoided what was trite."[64] Chesterton wrote the introduction to Sheen's book God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy; A Critical Study in the Light of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas.[65]

Common Sense edit

Chesterton has been called "The Apostle of Common Sense".[66] He was critical of the thinkers and popular philosophers of the day, who though very clever, were saying things that were nonsensical. This is illustrated again in Orthodoxy: "Thus when Mr H. G. Wells says (as he did somewhere), 'All chairs are quite different', he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them 'all chairs'."[67] Or, again from Orthodoxy:

The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless – one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan's will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite's will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is – well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the crossroads.[68]

Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both progressivism and conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."[69] He was an early member of the Fabian Society, but resigned at the time of the Boer War.[70]

On War edit

Chesterton first emerged as a journalist just after the turn of the 20th century. His great, and very lonely, opposition to the Second Boer War, set him very much apart from most of the rest of the British press. Chesterton was a Little Englander, opposed to imperialism, British or otherwise. Chesterton thought that Great Britain betrayed her own principles in the Boer Wars.

In vivid contrast to his opposition to the Boer Wars, Chesterton vigorously defended and encouraged the Allies in World War I. "The war was in Chesterton's eyes a crusade, and he was certain that England was right to fight as she had been wrong in fighting the Boers."[71] Chesterton saw the roots of the war in Prussian militarism. He was deeply disturbed by Prussia's unprovoked invasion and occupation of neutral Belgium and by reports of shocking atrocities the Imperial German Army was allegedly committing in Belgium. Over the course of the War, Chesterton wrote hundreds of essays defending it, attacking pacifism, and exhorting the public to persevere until victory. Some of these essays were collected in the 1916 work, The Barbarism of Berlin.[72]

One of Chesterton's most successful works in support of the War was his 1915 tongue-in-cheek The Crimes of England.[73] The work is masterfully ironic, supposedly apologizing and trying to help a fictitious Prussian professor named Whirlwind make the case for Prussia in WWI, while actually attacking Prussia throughout. Part of the book's humorous impact is the conceit that Professor Whirlwind never realizes how his supposed benefactor is undermining Prussia at every turn. Chesterton "blames" England for historically building up Prussia against Austria, and for its pacifism, especially among wealthy British Quaker political donors, who prevented Britain from standing up to past Prussian aggression.

Antisemitism edit

Chesterton faced accusations of antisemitism during his lifetime, saying in his 1920 book The New Jerusalem that it was something "for which my friends and I were for a long period rebuked and even reviled".[74] Despite his protestations to the contrary, the accusation continues to be repeated.[75] An early supporter of Captain Dreyfus, by 1906 he had turned into an anti-dreyfusard.[76] From the early 20th century, his fictional work included caricatures of Jews, stereotyping them as greedy, cowardly, disloyal and communists.[77] Martin Gardner suggests that Four Faultless Felons was allowed to go out of print in the United States because of the "anti-Semitism which mars so many pages."[78]

The Marconi scandal of 1912–1913 brought issues of anti-Semitism into the political mainstream. Senior ministers in the Liberal government had secretly profited from advance knowledge of deals regarding wireless telegraphy, and critics regarded it as relevant that some of the key players were Jewish.[79] According to historian Todd Endelman, who identified Chesterton as among the most vocal critics, "The Jew-baiting at the time of the Boer War and the Marconi scandal was linked to a broader protest, mounted in the main by the Radical wing of the Liberal Party, against the growing visibility of successful businessmen in national life and their challenge to what were seen as traditional English values."[80]

In a work of 1917, titled A Short History of England, Chesterton considers the royal decree of 1290 by which Edward I expelled Jews from England, a policy that remained in place until 1655. Chesterton writes that popular perception of Jewish moneylenders could well have led Edward I's subjects to regard him as a "tender father of his people" for "breaking the rule by which the rulers had hitherto fostered their bankers' wealth". He felt that Jews, "a sensitive and highly civilized people" who "were the capitalists of the age, the men with wealth banked ready for use", might legitimately complain that "Christian kings and nobles, and even Christian popes and bishops, used for Christian purposes (such as the Crusades and the cathedrals) the money that could only be accumulated in such mountains by a usury they inconsistently denounced as unchristian; and then, when worse times came, gave up the Jew to the fury of the poor".[81][82]

In The New Jerusalem Chesterton dedicated a chapter to his views on the Jewish question: the sense that Jews were a distinct people without a homeland of their own, living as foreigners in countries where they were always a minority.[83] He wrote that in the past, his position:

was always called Anti-Semitism; but it was always much more true to call it Zionism. ... my friends and I had in some general sense a policy in the matter; and it was in substance the desire to give Jews the dignity and status of a separate nation. We desired that in some fashion, and so far as possible, Jews should be represented by Jews, should live in a society of Jews, should be judged by Jews and ruled by Jews. I am an Anti-Semite if that is Anti-Semitism. It would seem more rational to call it Semitism.[84]

In the same place he proposed the thought experiment (describing it as "a parable" and "a flippant fancy") that Jews should be admitted to any role in English public life on condition that they must wear distinctively Middle Eastern garb, explaining that "The point is that we should know where we are; and he would know where he is, which is in a foreign land."[84]

Chesterton, like Belloc, openly expressed his abhorrence of Hitler's rule almost as soon as it started.[85] As Rabbi Stephen Wise wrote in a posthumous tribute to Chesterton in 1937:

When Hitlerism came, he was one of the first to speak out with all the directness and frankness of a great and unabashed spirit. Blessing to his memory![86]

In The Truth About the Tribes Chesterton attacked German race theories, writing: "the essence of Nazi Nationalism is to preserve the purity of a race in a continent where all races are impure".[87]

The historian Simon Mayers points out that Chesterton wrote in works such as The Crank, The Heresy of Race, and The Barbarian as Bore against the concept of racial superiority and critiqued pseudo-scientific race theories, saying they were akin to a new religion.[77] In The Truth About the Tribes Chesterton wrote, "the curse of race religion is that it makes each separate man the sacred image which he worships. His own bones are the sacred relics; his own blood is the blood of St. Januarius".[77] Mayers records that despite "his hostility towards Nazi antisemitism … [it is unfortunate that he made] claims that 'Hitlerism' was a form of Judaism, and that the Jews were partly responsible for race theory".[77] In The Judaism of Hitler, as well as in A Queer Choice and The Crank, Chesterton made much of the fact that the very notion of "a Chosen Race" was of Jewish origin, saying in The Crank: "If there is one outstanding quality in Hitlerism it is its Hebraism" and "the new Nordic Man has all the worst faults of the worst Jews: jealousy, greed, the mania of conspiracy, and above all, the belief in a Chosen Race".[77]

Mayers also shows that Chesterton portrayed Jews not only as culturally and religiously distinct, but racially as well. In The Feud of the Foreigner (1920) he said that the Jew "is a foreigner far more remote from us than is a Bavarian from a Frenchman; he is divided by the same type of division as that between us and a Chinaman or a Hindoo. He not only is not, but never was, of the same race".[77]

In The Everlasting Man, while writing about human sacrifice, Chesterton suggested that medieval stories about Jews killing children might have resulted from a distortion of genuine cases of devil worship. Chesterton wrote:

[T]he Hebrew prophets were perpetually protesting against the Hebrew race relapsing into an idolatry that involved such a war upon children; and it is probable enough that this abominable apostasy from the God of Israel has occasionally appeared in Israel since, in the form of what is called ritual murder; not of course by any representative of the religion of Judaism, but by individual and irresponsible diabolists who did happen to be Jews.[77][88]

The American Chesterton Society has devoted a whole issue of its magazine, Gilbert, to defending Chesterton against charges of antisemitism.[89] Likewise, Ann Farmer, author of Chesterton and the Jews: Friend, Critic, Defender,[90][91] writes, "Public figures from Winston Churchill to Wells proposed remedies for the 'Jewish problem' – the seemingly endless cycle of anti-Jewish persecution – all shaped by their worldviews. As patriots, Churchill and Chesterton embraced Zionism; both were among the first to defend the Jews from Nazism", concluding that "A defender of Jews in his youth – a conciliator as well as a defender – GKC returned to the defence when the Jewish people needed it most."[92]

Opposition to eugenics edit

In Eugenics and Other Evils, Chesterton attacked eugenics as Parliament was moving towards passage of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913. Some backing the ideas of eugenics called for the government to sterilise people deemed "mentally defective"; this view did not gain popularity but the idea of segregating them from the rest of society and thereby preventing them from reproducing did gain traction. These ideas disgusted Chesterton who wrote, "It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged that the aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children."[93] He condemned the proposed wording for such measures as being so vague as to apply to anyone, including "Every tramp who is sulk, every labourer who is shy, every rustic who is eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions as were designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the situation; and that is the point ... we are already under the Eugenist State; and nothing remains to us but rebellion."[93] He derided such ideas as founded on nonsense, "as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one's fellow citizens as a kind of chemical experiment".[93] Chesterton mocked the idea that poverty was a result of bad breeding: "[it is a] strange new disposition to regard the poor as a race; as if they were a colony of Japs or Chinese coolies ... The poor are not a race or even a type. It is senseless to talk about breeding them; for they are not a breed. They are, in cold fact, what Dickens describes: 'a dustbin of individual accidents,' of damaged dignity, and often of damaged gentility."[93][94]

Chesterton's fence edit

"Chesterton's fence" is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. The quotation is from Chesterton's 1929 book, The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic, in the chapter, "The Drift from Domesticity":

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'[95]

Distributism edit

 
Self-portrait based on the distributist slogan "Three acres and a cow"

Inspired by Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum, Chesterton's brother Cecil and his friend, Hilaire Belloc were instrumental in developing the economic philosophy of distributism, a word Belloc coined. Gilbert embraced their views and, particularly after Cecil's death in World War I, became one of the foremost distributists and the newspaper whose care he inherited from Cecil, which ultimately came to be named G. K.'s Weekly, became its most consistent advocate. Distributism stands as a third way, against both unrestrained capitalism, and socialism, advocating a wide distribution of both property and political power.

Legacy edit

The author James Parker, in The Atlantic, gave a modern appraisal:

In his vastness and mobility, Chesterton continues to elude definition: He was a Catholic convert and an oracular man of letters, a pneumatic cultural presence, an aphorist with the production rate of a pulp novelist. Poetry, criticism, fiction, biography, columns, public debate...Chesterton was a journalist; he was a metaphysician. He was a reactionary; he was a radical. He was a modernist, acutely alive to the rupture in consciousness that produced Eliot's "The Hollow Men"; he was an anti-modernist...a parochial Englishman and a post-Victorian gasbag; he was a mystic wedded to eternity. All of these cheerfully contradictory things are true...for the final, resolving fact that he was a genius. Touched once by the live wire of his thought, you don't forget it ... His prose ... [is] supremely entertaining, the stately outlines of an older, heavier rhetoric punctually convulsed by what he once called (in reference to the Book of Job) "earthquake irony". He fulminates wittily; he cracks jokes like thunder. His message, a steady illumination beaming and clanging through every lens and facet of his creativity, was really very straightforward: get on your knees, modern man, and praise God.[96]

Possible launch of sainthood cause after earlier attempt to launch was put on hold edit

The Bishop Emeritus of Northampton, Peter John Haworth Doyle, in 2012 had opened a preliminary investigation into possibly launching a cause for beatification and then canonization (for possible sainthood). but eventually decided not to open the cause. The current Bishop of Northampton, David James Oakley, has agreed to preach at a Mass during a Chesterton pilgrimage in England (the route goes through London and Beaconsfield, which are both connected to his life), and some have speculated he may be more favourable to the idea. If the cause is actually opened at the diocesan level (the Vatican must also give approval, that nothing stands in the way – the "nihil obstat"), then he could be given the title "Servant of God". It is not known if his alleged anti-Semitism (which would be considered a serious matter by the Church if it is true) may have played a role. His life and writings and views and what he did for others would be closely examined, in any case.[97]

Literary edit

Chesterton's socio-economic system of Distributism affected the sculptor Eric Gill, who established a commune of Catholic artists at Ditchling in Sussex. The Ditchling group developed a journal called The Game, in which they expressed many Chestertonian principles, particularly anti-industrialism and an advocacy of religious family life.[citation needed] His novel The Man Who Was Thursday inspired the Irish Republican leader Michael Collins with the idea that "If you didn't seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out."[98] Collins's favourite work of Chesterton was The Napoleon of Notting Hill, and he was "almost fanatically attached to it", according to his friend Sir William Darling.[99] His column in the Illustrated London News on 18 September 1909 had a profound effect on Mahatma Gandhi.[100] P. N. Furbank asserts that Gandhi was "thunderstruck" when he read it,[101] while Martin Green notes that "Gandhi was so delighted with this that he told Indian Opinion to reprint it".[102] Another convert was Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who said that the book What's Wrong with the World changed his life in terms of ideas and religion.[103] The author Neil Gaiman stated that he grew up reading Chesterton in his school's library, and that The Napoleon of Notting Hill influenced his own book Neverwhere. Gaiman based the character Gilbert from the comic book The Sandman on Chesterton,[104] and Good Omens, the novel Gaiman co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, is dedicated to Chesterton. The Argentine author and essayist Jorge Luis Borges cited Chesterton as influential on his fiction, telling interviewer Richard Burgin that "Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story".[105]

Education edit

Chesterton's many references to education and human formation have inspired a variety of educators including the 44 schools of the Chesterton Schools Network, which includes the Chesterton Academy founded by Dale Ahlquist.[106] and the Italian Scuola Libera G. K. Chesterton in San Benedetto del Tronto, Marche.[107] The publisher and educator Christopher Perrin (who completed his doctoral work on Chesterton) makes frequent reference to Chesterton in his work with classical schools.[108]

Namesakes edit

In 1974, Father Ian Boyd, C.S.B, founded The Chesterton Review, a scholarly journal devoted to Chesterton and his circle. The journal is published by the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture based in Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey.[109]

In 1996, Dale Ahlquist founded the American Chesterton Society to explore and promote Chesterton's writings.[110]

In 2008, a Catholic high school, Chesterton Academy, opened in the Minneapolis area. In the same year Scuola Libera Chesterton opened in San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy.[111]

In 2012, a crater on the planet Mercury was named Chesterton after the author.[112]

In 2014, G. K. Chesterton Academy of Chicago, a Catholic high school, opened in Highland Park, Illinois.[113]

A fictionalised G. K. Chesterton is the central character in the Young Chesterton Chronicles, a series of young adult adventure novels by John McNichol,[114][115] and in the G K Chesterton Mystery series, a series of detective novels by the Australian author Kel Richards.[116]

Major works edit

Main article: G. K. Chesterton bibliography

Books edit

  • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (1904), Ward, M. (ed.), The Napoleon of Notting Hill
  • ——— (1903), Robert Browning, Macmillan[117]
  • ——— (1905), Heretics, John Lane
  • ——— (1906), Charles Dickens: A Critical Study, Dodd, Mead & Co., p. 299
  • ——— (1908a), The Man Who Was Thursday
  • ——— (1908b), Orthodoxy
  • ——— (1911a), The Innocence of Father Brown
  • ——— (1911b), The Ballad of the White Horse
  • ——— (1912), Manalive
  • ——— (1916), The Crimes of England
  • ———, Father Brown (short stories) (detective fiction)
  • ——— (1920), Ward, M. (ed.), , archived from the original on 15 January 2017
  • ——— (1922), The Man Who Knew Too Much, Simon & Brown, ISBN 1731700563
  • ——— (1922), Eugenics and Other Evils 
  • ——— (1923), Saint Francis of Assisi
  • ——— (1925), The Everlasting Man
  • ——— (1925), William Cobbett
  • ——— (1933), Saint Thomas Aquinas
  • ——— (1935), The Well and the Shallows
  • ——— (1936), The Autobiography
  • ——— (1950), Ward, M. (ed.), , archived from the original on 15 January 2017

Short stories edit

  • "The Trees of Pride", 1922
  • "The Crime of the Communist", Collier's Weekly, July 1934.
  • "The Three Horsemen", Collier's Weekly, April 1935.
  • "The Ring of the Lovers", Collier's Weekly, April 1935.
  • "A Tall Story", Collier's Weekly, April 1935.
  • "The Angry Street – A Bad Dream", Famous Fantastic Mysteries, February 1947.

Plays edit

References edit

Citations edit

  1. ^ Ker, Ian (2003). The Catholic Revival in English Literature (1845–1961): Newman, Hopkins, Belloc, Chesterton, Greene, Waugh. University of Notre Dame Press.
  2. ^ "Obituary", Variety, 17 June 1936
  3. ^ a b O'Connor, John (1937). Father Brown on Chesterton (PDF). Frederick Muller Ltd. (PDF) from the original on 3 April 2013. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  4. ^ a b , Time, 11 October 1943, archived from the original on 20 November 2009, retrieved 24 October 2008
  5. ^ Douglas 1974: "Like his friend Ronald Knox he was both entertainer and Christian apologist. The world never fails to appreciate the combination when it is well done; even evangelicals sometimes give the impression of bestowing a waiver on deviations if a man is enough of a genius."
  6. ^ Ker 2011, p. 485.
  7. ^ Douglas, J. D. (24 May 1974). "G. K. Chesterton, the Eccentric Prince of Paradox". Christianity Today. from the original on 1 November 2014. Retrieved 8 July 2014.
  8. ^ Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (2002). Čovjek koji je previše znao (in Croatian). Translated by Darko Mitin. Zlatar: Partenon. p. 134. ISBN 953-6840-03-0.
  9. ^ Bergonzi, Bernard (2004). "Chesterton, Gilbert Keith [G. K. C.] (1874–1936), writer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32392. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
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  41. ^ Gray, Robert. "Paradox Was His Doxy", 10 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine The American Conservative, 23 March 2009.
  42. ^ a b Eliot, T. S. (20 June 1936). "Gilbert Chesterton by T. S. Eliot". The Tablet. 167 (5015): 785. from the original on 1 August 2020. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  43. ^ Hasnes, Geir (2022). G. K. Chesterton. A Bibliography. Kongsberg, Norway: Classica forlag. ISBN 978-82-7610-013-6.
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  53. ^ "Misguided Superman Fan: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)". Christian History Institute.
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  58. ^ Lewis, Clive Staples, The Collected Letters, vol. 2, p. 823
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  60. ^ Routley, Erik (2005). An English-speaking Hymnal Guide. GIA publications. p. 129.
  61. ^ Edmondson, Jacqueline, ed. (2013). Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood. p. 39.
  62. ^ "Bruce Dickinson: Faith And Music (1999)". from the original on 18 February 2017. Retrieved 11 September 2017 – via YouTube.
  63. ^ Gilson, Etienne (1987), "Letter to Chesterton's editor", in Pieper, Josef (ed.), Guide to Thomas Aquinas, University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 6–7
  64. ^ Sheen, Fulton J. (2008). Treasure in Clay. New York: Image Books/Doubleday, p. 79.
  65. ^ Sheen, Fulton J. God and Intelligence. IVE Press.
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  70. ^ Holroyd, Michael (1989). Bernard Shaw Vol 2. London: Chatto & Windus. p. 214. ISBN 978-0701133504.
  71. ^ Ffinch, Michael (1986). G. K. Chesterton: A Biography. New York: Harper and Row. p. 228–29. ISBN 0-06-252576-X.
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  98. ^ Forester, Margery (2006). Michael Collins – The Lost Leader, Gill & MacMillan, p. 35.
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  100. ^ Gandhi, Rajmohan (2007). Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire. Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 139–141.
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Sources edit

Cited biographies

Further reading edit

  • Ahlquist, Dale (2012), The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G. K. Chesterton, Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-1-58617-675-4
  • ——— (2003), G. K. Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense, Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-857-8
  • Belmonte, Kevin (2011). Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life and Impact of G. K. Chesterton. Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson.
  • Blackstock, Alan R. (2012). The Rhetoric of Redemption: Chesterton, Ethical Criticism, and the Common Man. New York. Peter Lang Publishing.
  • Braybrooke, Patrick (1922). Gilbert Keith Chesterton. London: Chelsea Publishing Company.
  • Cammaerts, Émile (1937). The Laughing Prophet: The Seven Virtues nd G. K. Chesterton. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.
  • Campbell, W. E. (1908). "G. K. Chesterton: Inquisitor and Democrat", 6 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine The Catholic World, Vol. LXXXVIII, pp. 769–782.
  • Campbell, W. E. (1909). "G. K. Chesterton: Catholic Apologist" The Catholic World, Vol. LXXXIX, No. 529, pp. 1–12.
  • Chesterton, Cecil (1908). G. K. Chesterton: A Criticism. London: Alston Rivers (Rep. by John Lane Company, 1909).
  • Clipper, Lawrence J. (1974). G. K. Chesterton. New York: Twayne Publishers.
  • Coates, John (1984). Chesterton and the Edwardian Cultural Crisis. Hull University Press.
  • Coates, John (2002). G. K. Chesterton as Controversialist, Essayist, Novelist, and Critic. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
  • Conlon, D. J. (1987). G. K. Chesterton: A Half Century of Views. Oxford University Press.
  • Cooney, A (1999), G. K. Chesterton, One Sword at Least, London: Third Way, ISBN 978-0-9535077-1-9
  • Coren, Michael (2001) [1989], Gilbert: The Man who was G. K. Chesterton, Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, ISBN 9781573831956, OCLC 45190713
  • Corrin, Jay P. (1981). G. K. Chesterton & Hilaire Belloc: The Battle Against Modernity. Ohio University Press.
  • Ervine, St. John G. (1922). "G. K. Chesterton". In: Some Impressions of my Elders. New York: The Macmillan Company, pp. 90–112.
  • Ffinch, Michael (1986), G. K. Chesterton, Harper & Row
  • Gilbert Magazine (November/December 2008). Vol. 12, No. 2-3, Special Issue: Chesterton & The Jews.
  • Haldane, John. 'Chesterton's Philosophy of Education', philosophy, Vol. 65, No. 251 (Jan. 1990), pp. 65–80.
  • Hitchens, Christopher (2012). "The Reactionary", 10 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine The Atlantic.
  • Herts, B. Russell (1914). "Gilbert K. Chesterton: Defender of the Discarded". In: Depreciations. New York: Albert & Charles Boni, pp. 65–86.
  • Hollis, Christopher (1970). The Mind of Chesterton. London: Hollis & Carter.
  • Hunter, Lynette (1979). G. K. Chesterton: Explorations in Allegory. London: Macmillan Press.
  • Jaki, Stanley (1986). Chesterton: A Seer of Science. University of Illinois Press.
  • Jaki, Stanley (1986). "Chesterton's Landmark Year". In: Chance or Reality and Other Essays. University Press of America.
  • Kenner, Hugh (1947). Paradox in Chesterton. New York: Sheed & Ward.
  • Kimball, Roger (2011). "G. K. Chesterton: Master of Rejuvenation", 27 September 2012 at the Wayback Machine The New Criterion, Vol. XXX, p. 26.
  • Kirk, Russell (1971). "Chesterton, Madmen, and Madhouses", Modern Age, Vol. XV, No. 1, pp. 6–16.
  • Knight, Mark (2004). Chesterton and Evil. Fordham University Press.
  • Lea, F. A. (1947). "G. K. Chesterton". In: Donald Attwater (ed.) Modern Christian Revolutionaries. New York: Devin-Adair Co.
  • McCleary, Joseph R. (2009). The Historical Imagination of G. K. Chesterton: Locality, Patriotism, and Nationalism. Taylor & Francis.
  • McLuhan, Marshall (January 1936), "G. K. Chesterton: A Practical Mystic", 29 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine Dalhousie Review, 15 (4): 455–464.
  • McNichol, J. (2008), The Young Chesterton Chronicles, vol. Book One: The Tripods Attack!, Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute, ISBN 978-1-933184-26-5
  • Oddie, William (2010). Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC, 1874–1908. Oxford University Press.
  • Orage, Alfred Richard. (1922). "G. K. Chesterton on Rome and Germany". In: Readers and Writers (1917–1921). London: George Allen & Unwin, pp. 155–161.
  • Oser, Lee (2007). The Return of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Eliot, Tolkien, and the Romance of History. University of Missouri Press.
  • Paine, Randall (1999), The Universe and Mr. Chesterton, Sherwood Sugden, ISBN 978-0-89385-511-6
  • Pearce, Joseph (1997), Wisdom and Innocence – A Life of G. K. Chesterton, Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-700-7
  • Peck, William George (1920). "Mr. G. K. Chesterton and the Return to Sanity". In: From Chaos to Catholicism. London: George Allen & Unwin, pp. 52–92.
  • Raymond, E. T. (1919). "Mr. G. K. Chesterton". In: All & Sundry. London: T. Fisher Unwin, pp. 68–76.
  • Schall, James V. (2000). Schall on Chesterton: Timely Essays on Timeless Paradoxes. Catholic University of America Press.
  • Scott, William T. (1912). Chesterton and Other Essays. Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham.
  • Seaber, Luke (2011). G. K. Chesterton's Literary Influence on George Orwell: A Surprising Irony. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
  • Sheed, Wilfrid (1971). "Chesterbelloc and the Jews", The New York Review of Books, Vol. XVII, No. 3.
  • Shuster, Norman (1922). "The Adventures of a Journalist: G. K. Chesterton". In: The Catholic Spirit in Modern English Literature. New York: The Macmillan Company, pp. 229–248.
  • Slosson, Edwin E. (1917). "G. K. Chesterton: Knight Errant of Orthodoxy". In: Six Major Prophets. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, pp. 129–189.
  • Smith, Marion Couthouy (1921). "The Rightness of G. K. Chesterton", The Catholic World, Vol. CXIII, No. 678, pp. 163–168.
  • Stapleton, Julia (2009). Christianity, Patriotism, and Nationhood: The England of G. K. Chesterton. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
  • Sullivan, John (1974), G. K. Chesterton: A Centenary Appraisal, London: Paul Elek, ISBN 978-0-236-17628-1
  • Tonquédec, Joseph de (1920). G. K. Chesterton, ses Idées et son Caractère, Nouvelle Librairie National.
  • Ward, Maisie (1952). Return to Chesterton, London: Sheed & Ward.
  • West, Julius (1915). G. K. Chesterton: A Critical Study. London: Martin Secker.
  • Williams, Donald T (2006), Mere Humanity: G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien on the Human Condition

External links edit

November 24, 2023
chesterton, confused, with, chesterton, gilbert, keith, chesterton, 1874, june, 1936, english, writer, philosopher, christian, apologist, literary, critic, sgchesterton, 1909borngilbert, keith, chesterton, 1874, 1874kensington, london, englanddied14, june, 193. Not to be confused with A K Chesterton Gilbert Keith Chesterton KC SG 29 May 1874 14 June 1936 was an English writer 2 philosopher Christian apologist and literary and art critic G K ChestertonKC SGChesterton in 1909BornGilbert Keith Chesterton 1874 05 29 29 May 1874Kensington London EnglandDied14 June 1936 1936 06 14 aged 62 Beaconsfield Buckinghamshire EnglandResting placeRoman Catholic Cemetery BeaconsfieldOccupationJournalistnovelistessayistpoetEducationUniversity College LondonPeriod1900 1936GenreEssays fantasy Christian apologetics Catholic apologetics mystery poetryLiterary movementCatholic literary revival 1 Notable worksThe Napoleon of Notting HillThe Man Who Was ThursdayOrthodoxyFather Brown storiesThe Everlasting ManSpouseFrances Blogg m 1901 wbr RelativesCecil Chesterton brother A K Chesterton first cousin once removed SignatureChesterton created the fictional priest detective Father Brown 3 and wrote on apologetics Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man 4 5 Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an orthodox Christian and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism eventually converting from high church Anglicanism Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold Thomas Carlyle John Henry Newman and John Ruskin 6 He has been referred to as the prince of paradox 7 Of his writing style Time observed Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings proverbs allegories first carefully turning them inside out 4 His writings were an influence on Jorge Luis Borges who compared his literature with that of Edgar Allan Poe 8 Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Early life 1 2 Career 1 3 Death and veneration 2 Writing 3 Contemporaries 3 1 Chesterbelloc 3 2 Wilde 3 3 Shaw 4 Views 4 1 Advocacy of Catholicism 4 2 Common Sense 4 3 On War 4 4 Antisemitism 4 5 Opposition to eugenics 4 6 Chesterton s fence 4 7 Distributism 5 Legacy 5 1 Possible launch of sainthood cause after earlier attempt to launch was put on hold 5 2 Literary 5 3 Education 5 4 Namesakes 6 Major works 6 1 Books 6 2 Short stories 6 3 Plays 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 Sources 8 Further reading 9 External linksBiography editEarly life edit nbsp Chesterton at the age of 17Chesterton was born in Campden Hill in Kensington London the son of Edward Chesterton 1841 1922 an estate agent and Marie Louise nee Grosjean of Swiss French origin 9 10 11 Chesterton was baptised at the age of one month into the Church of England 12 though his family themselves were irregularly practising Unitarians 13 According to his autobiography as a young man he became fascinated with the occult and along with his brother Cecil experimented with Ouija boards 14 He was educated at St Paul s School then attended the Slade School of Art to become an illustrator The Slade is a department of University College London where Chesterton also took classes in literature but he did not complete a degree in either subject He married Frances Blogg in 1901 the marriage lasted the rest of his life Chesterton credited Frances with leading him back to Anglicanism though he later considered Anglicanism to be a pale imitation He entered in full communion with the Catholic Church in 1922 15 The couple were unable to have children 16 17 A friend from schooldays was Edmund Clerihew Bentley inventor of the clerihew a whimsical four line biographical poem Chesterton himself wrote clerihews and illustrated his friend s first published collection of poetry Biography for Beginners 1905 which popularised the clerihew form He became godfather to Bentley s son Nicolas and opened his novel The Man Who Was Thursday with a poem written to Bentley Career edit In September 1895 Chesterton began working for the London publisher George Redway where he remained for just over a year 18 In October 1896 he moved to the publishing house T Fisher Unwin 18 where he remained until 1902 During this period he also undertook his first journalistic work as a freelance art and literary critic In 1902 the Daily News gave him a weekly opinion column followed in 1905 by a weekly column in The Illustrated London News for which he continued to write for the next thirty years Early on Chesterton showed a great interest in and talent for art He had planned to become an artist and his writing shows a vision that clothed abstract ideas in concrete and memorable images Even his fiction contained carefully concealed parables Father Brown is perpetually correcting the incorrect vision of the bewildered folks at the scene of the crime and wandering off at the end with the criminal to exercise his priestly role of recognition repentance and reconciliation For example in the story The Flying Stars Father Brown entreats the character Flambeau to give up his life of crime There is still youth and honour and humour in you don t fancy they will last in that trade Men may keep a sort of level of good but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil That road goes down and down The kind man drinks and turns cruel the frank man kills and lies about it Many a man I ve known started like you to be an honest outlaw a merry robber of the rich and ended stamped into slime 19 nbsp Caricature by Max BeerbohmChesterton loved to debate often engaging in friendly public disputes with such men as George Bernard Shaw 20 H G Wells Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow 21 22 According to his autobiography he and Shaw played cowboys in a silent film that was never released 23 On 7 January 1914 Chesterton along with his brother Cecil and future sister in law Ada took part in the mock trial of John Jasper for the murder of Edwin Drood Chesterton was Judge and George Bernard Shaw played the role of foreman of the jury 24 Chesterton was a large man standing 6 feet 4 inches 1 93 m tall and weighing around 20 stone 6 pounds 130 kg 286 lb His girth gave rise to an anecdote during the First World War when a lady in London asked why he was not out at the Front he replied If you go round to the side you will see that I am 25 On another occasion he remarked to his friend George Bernard Shaw To look at you anyone would think a famine had struck England Shaw retorted To look at you anyone would think you had caused it 26 P G Wodehouse once described a very loud crash as a sound like G K Chesterton falling onto a sheet of tin 27 Chesterton usually wore a cape and a crumpled hat with a swordstick in hand and a cigar hanging out of his mouth He had a tendency to forget where he was supposed to be going and miss the train that was supposed to take him there It is reported that on several occasions he sent a telegram to his wife Frances from an incorrect location writing such things as Am in Market Harborough Where ought I to be to which she would reply Home 28 Chesterton himself told this story omitting however his wife s alleged reply in his autobiography 29 In 1931 the BBC invited Chesterton to give a series of radio talks He accepted tentatively at first However from 1932 until his death Chesterton delivered over 40 talks per year He was allowed and encouraged to improvise on the scripts This allowed his talks to maintain an intimate character as did the decision to allow his wife and secretary to sit with him during his broadcasts 30 page needed The talks were very popular A BBC official remarked after Chesterton s death that in another year or so he would have become the dominating voice from Broadcasting House 31 Chesterton was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1935 32 Chesterton was part of the Detection Club a society of British mystery authors founded by Anthony Berkeley in 1928 He was elected as the first president and served from 1930 to 1936 till he was succeeded by E C Bentley 33 Death and veneration edit nbsp Telegram sent by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli the future Pius XII on behalf of Pope Pius XI to the people of England following the death of ChestertonChesterton died of congestive heart failure on 14 June 1936 aged 62 at his home in Beaconsfield Buckinghamshire His last words were a greeting of good morning spoken to his wife Frances The sermon at Chesterton s Requiem Mass in Westminster Cathedral London was delivered by Ronald Knox on 27 June 1936 Knox said All of this generation has grown up under Chesterton s influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton 34 He is buried in Beaconsfield in the Catholic Cemetery Chesterton s estate was probated at 28 389 equivalent to 2 052 132 in 2021 35 Near the end of Chesterton s life Pope Pius XI invested him as Knight Commander with Star of the Papal Order of St Gregory the Great KC SG 31 The Chesterton Society has proposed that he be beatified 36 Writing editChesterton wrote around 80 books several hundred poems some 200 short stories 4 000 essays mostly newspaper columns and several plays He was a literary and social critic historian playwright novelist and Catholic theologian 37 38 and apologist debater and mystery writer He was a columnist for the Daily News The Illustrated London News and his own paper G K s Weekly he also wrote articles for the Encyclopaedia Britannica including the entry on Charles Dickens and part of the entry on Humour in the 14th edition 1929 His best known character is the priest detective Father Brown 3 who appeared only in short stories while The Man Who Was Thursday is arguably his best known novel He was a convinced Christian long before he was received into the Catholic Church and Christian themes and symbolism appear in much of his writing In the United States his writings on distributism were popularised through The American Review published by Seward Collins in New York Of his nonfiction Charles Dickens A Critical Study 1906 has received some of the broadest based praise According to Ian Ker The Catholic Revival in English Literature 1845 1961 2003 In Chesterton s eyes Dickens belongs to Merry not Puritan England Ker treats Chesterton s thought in chapter 4 of that book as largely growing out of his true appreciation of Dickens a somewhat shop soiled property in the view of other literary opinions of the time The biography was largely responsible for creating a popular revival for Dickens s work as well as a serious reconsideration of Dickens by scholars 39 Chesterton s writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour He employed paradox while making serious comments on the world government politics economics philosophy theology and many other topics 40 41 T S Eliot summed up his work as follows He was importantly and consistently on the side of the angels Behind the Johnsonian fancy dress so reassuring to the British public he concealed the most serious and revolutionary designs concealing them by exposure Chesterton s social and economic ideas were fundamentally Christian and Catholic He did more I think than any man of his time and was able to do more than anyone else because of his particular background development and abilities as a public performer to maintain the existence of the important minority in the modern world He leaves behind a permanent claim upon our loyalty to see that the work that he did in his time is continued in ours 42 Eliot commented further that His poetry was first rate journalistic balladry and I do not suppose that he took it more seriously than it deserved He reached a high imaginative level with The Napoleon of Notting Hill and higher with The Man Who Was Thursday romances in which he turned the Stevensonian fantasy to more serious purpose His book on Dickens seems to me the best essay on that author that has ever been written Some of his essays can be read again and again though of his essay writing as a whole one can only say that it is remarkable to have maintained such a high average with so large an output 42 In 2022 a three volume bibliography of Chesterton was published listing 9000 contributions he made to newspapers magazines and journals as well as 200 books and 3000 articles about him 43 Contemporaries edit Chesterbelloc edit See also G K s Weekly nbsp George Bernard Shaw Hilaire Belloc and G K ChestertonChesterton is often associated with his close friend the poet and essayist Hilaire Belloc 44 45 George Bernard Shaw coined the name Chesterbelloc 46 for their partnership 47 and this stuck Though they were very different men they shared many beliefs 48 in 1922 Chesterton joined Belloc in the Catholic faith and both voiced criticisms of capitalism and socialism 49 They instead espoused a third way distributism 50 G K s Weekly which occupied much of Chesterton s energy in the last 15 years of his life was the successor to Belloc s New Witness taken over from Cecil Chesterton Gilbert s brother who died in World War I In his book On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters Belloc wrote that Everything he wrote upon any one of the great English literary names was of the first quality He summed up any one pen that of Jane Austen for instance in exact sentences sometimes in a single sentence after a fashion which no one else has approached He stood quite by himself in this department He understood the very minds to take the two most famous names of Thackeray and of Dickens He understood and presented Meredith He understood the supremacy in Milton He understood Pope He understood the great Dryden He was not swamped as nearly all his contemporaries were by Shakespeare wherein they drown as in a vast sea for that is what Shakespeare is Gilbert Chesterton continued to understand the youngest and latest comers as he understood the forefathers in our great corpus of English verse and prose 51 Wilde edit In his book Heretics Chesterton said this of Oscar Wilde The same lesson of the pessimistic pleasure seeker was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde It is the carpe diem religion but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people but of very unhappy people Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw 52 More briefly and with a closer approximation to Wilde s own style he wrote in his 1908 book Orthodoxy concerning the necessity of making symbolic sacrifices for the gift of creation Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets But Oscar Wilde was wrong we can pay for sunsets We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde Shaw edit Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw were famous friends and enjoyed their arguments and discussions Although rarely in agreement they each maintained good will toward and respect for the other 53 In his writing Chesterton expressed himself very plainly on where they differed and why In Heretics he writes of Shaw After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive Mr Shaw has discovered with characteristic sense that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress most people easily pleased would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity Mr Shaw not being easily pleased decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake If man as we know him is incapable of the philosophy of progress Mr Shaw asks not for a new kind of philosophy but for a new kind of man It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby and on discovering that it was not suitable should not throw away the food and ask for a new food but throw the baby out of window and ask for a new baby 54 Views editAdvocacy of Catholicism edit Chesterton s views in contrast to Shaw and others became increasingly focused towards the Church In Orthodoxy he wrote The worship of will is the negation of will If Mr Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says Will something that is tantamount to saying I do not mind what you will and that is tantamount to saying I have no will in the matter You cannot admire will in general because the essence of will is that it is particular 55 Chesterton s The Everlasting Man contributed to C S Lewis s conversion to Christianity In a letter to Sheldon Vanauken 14 December 1950 56 Lewis called the book the best popular apologetic I know 57 and to Rhonda Bodle he wrote 31 December 1947 58 the very best popular defence of the full Christian position I know is G K Chesterton s The Everlasting Man The book was also cited in a list of 10 books that most shaped his vocational attitude and philosophy of life 59 Chesterton s hymn O God of Earth and Altar was printed in The Commonwealth and then included in the English Hymnal in 1906 60 Several lines of the hymn appear in the beginning of the song Revelations by the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden on their 1983 album Piece of Mind 61 Lead singer Bruce Dickinson in an interview stated I have a fondness for hymns I love some of the ritual the beautiful words Jerusalem and there was another one with words by G K Chesterton O God of Earth and Altar very fire and brimstone Bow down and hear our cry I used that for an Iron Maiden song Revelations In my strange and clumsy way I was trying to say look it s all the same stuff 62 Etienne Gilson praised Chesterton s book on Thomas Aquinas I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on Saint Thomas the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St Thomas Aquinas and who perhaps have themselves published two or three volumes on the subject cannot fail to perceive that the so called wit of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame 63 Archbishop Fulton J Sheen the author of 70 books identified Chesterton as the stylist who had the greatest impact on his own writing stating in his autobiography Treasure in Clay the greatest influence in writing was G K Chesterton who never used a useless word who saw the value of a paradox and avoided what was trite 64 Chesterton wrote the introduction to Sheen s book God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy A Critical Study in the Light of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas 65 Common Sense edit Chesterton has been called The Apostle of Common Sense 66 He was critical of the thinkers and popular philosophers of the day who though very clever were saying things that were nonsensical This is illustrated again in Orthodoxy Thus when Mr H G Wells says as he did somewhere All chairs are quite different he utters not merely a misstatement but a contradiction in terms If all chairs were quite different you could not call them all chairs 67 Or again from Orthodoxy The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void Nietzsche scales staggering mountains but he turns up ultimately in Tibet He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana They are both helpless one because he must not grasp anything and the other because he must not let go of anything The Tolstoyan s will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil But the Nietzscheite s will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good for if all special actions are good none of them are special They stand at the crossroads and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads The result is well some things are not hard to calculate They stand at the crossroads 68 Chesterton as a political thinker cast aspersions on both progressivism and conservatism saying The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected 69 He was an early member of the Fabian Society but resigned at the time of the Boer War 70 On War edit Chesterton first emerged as a journalist just after the turn of the 20th century His great and very lonely opposition to the Second Boer War set him very much apart from most of the rest of the British press Chesterton was a Little Englander opposed to imperialism British or otherwise Chesterton thought that Great Britain betrayed her own principles in the Boer Wars In vivid contrast to his opposition to the Boer Wars Chesterton vigorously defended and encouraged the Allies in World War I The war was in Chesterton s eyes a crusade and he was certain that England was right to fight as she had been wrong in fighting the Boers 71 Chesterton saw the roots of the war in Prussian militarism He was deeply disturbed by Prussia s unprovoked invasion and occupation of neutral Belgium and by reports of shocking atrocities the Imperial German Army was allegedly committing in Belgium Over the course of the War Chesterton wrote hundreds of essays defending it attacking pacifism and exhorting the public to persevere until victory Some of these essays were collected in the 1916 work The Barbarism of Berlin 72 One of Chesterton s most successful works in support of the War was his 1915 tongue in cheek The Crimes of England 73 The work is masterfully ironic supposedly apologizing and trying to help a fictitious Prussian professor named Whirlwind make the case for Prussia in WWI while actually attacking Prussia throughout Part of the book s humorous impact is the conceit that Professor Whirlwind never realizes how his supposed benefactor is undermining Prussia at every turn Chesterton blames England for historically building up Prussia against Austria and for its pacifism especially among wealthy British Quaker political donors who prevented Britain from standing up to past Prussian aggression Antisemitism edit Chesterton faced accusations of antisemitism during his lifetime saying in his 1920 book The New Jerusalem that it was something for which my friends and I were for a long period rebuked and even reviled 74 Despite his protestations to the contrary the accusation continues to be repeated 75 An early supporter of Captain Dreyfus by 1906 he had turned into an anti dreyfusard 76 From the early 20th century his fictional work included caricatures of Jews stereotyping them as greedy cowardly disloyal and communists 77 Martin Gardner suggests that Four Faultless Felons was allowed to go out of print in the United States because of the anti Semitism which mars so many pages 78 The Marconi scandal of 1912 1913 brought issues of anti Semitism into the political mainstream Senior ministers in the Liberal government had secretly profited from advance knowledge of deals regarding wireless telegraphy and critics regarded it as relevant that some of the key players were Jewish 79 According to historian Todd Endelman who identified Chesterton as among the most vocal critics The Jew baiting at the time of the Boer War and the Marconi scandal was linked to a broader protest mounted in the main by the Radical wing of the Liberal Party against the growing visibility of successful businessmen in national life and their challenge to what were seen as traditional English values 80 In a work of 1917 titled A Short History of England Chesterton considers the royal decree of 1290 by which Edward I expelled Jews from England a policy that remained in place until 1655 Chesterton writes that popular perception of Jewish moneylenders could well have led Edward I s subjects to regard him as a tender father of his people for breaking the rule by which the rulers had hitherto fostered their bankers wealth He felt that Jews a sensitive and highly civilized people who were the capitalists of the age the men with wealth banked ready for use might legitimately complain that Christian kings and nobles and even Christian popes and bishops used for Christian purposes such as the Crusades and the cathedrals the money that could only be accumulated in such mountains by a usury they inconsistently denounced as unchristian and then when worse times came gave up the Jew to the fury of the poor 81 82 In The New Jerusalem Chesterton dedicated a chapter to his views on the Jewish question the sense that Jews were a distinct people without a homeland of their own living as foreigners in countries where they were always a minority 83 He wrote that in the past his position was always called Anti Semitism but it was always much more true to call it Zionism my friends and I had in some general sense a policy in the matter and it was in substance the desire to give Jews the dignity and status of a separate nation We desired that in some fashion and so far as possible Jews should be represented by Jews should live in a society of Jews should be judged by Jews and ruled by Jews I am an Anti Semite if that is Anti Semitism It would seem more rational to call it Semitism 84 In the same place he proposed the thought experiment describing it as a parable and a flippant fancy that Jews should be admitted to any role in English public life on condition that they must wear distinctively Middle Eastern garb explaining that The point is that we should know where we are and he would know where he is which is in a foreign land 84 Chesterton like Belloc openly expressed his abhorrence of Hitler s rule almost as soon as it started 85 As Rabbi Stephen Wise wrote in a posthumous tribute to Chesterton in 1937 When Hitlerism came he was one of the first to speak out with all the directness and frankness of a great and unabashed spirit Blessing to his memory 86 In The Truth About the Tribes Chesterton attacked German race theories writing the essence of Nazi Nationalism is to preserve the purity of a race in a continent where all races are impure 87 The historian Simon Mayers points out that Chesterton wrote in works such as The Crank The Heresy of Race and The Barbarian as Bore against the concept of racial superiority and critiqued pseudo scientific race theories saying they were akin to a new religion 77 In The Truth About the Tribes Chesterton wrote the curse of race religion is that it makes each separate man the sacred image which he worships His own bones are the sacred relics his own blood is the blood of St Januarius 77 Mayers records that despite his hostility towards Nazi antisemitism it is unfortunate that he made claims that Hitlerism was a form of Judaism and that the Jews were partly responsible for race theory 77 In The Judaism of Hitler as well as in A Queer Choice and The Crank Chesterton made much of the fact that the very notion of a Chosen Race was of Jewish origin saying in The Crank If there is one outstanding quality in Hitlerism it is its Hebraism and the new Nordic Man has all the worst faults of the worst Jews jealousy greed the mania of conspiracy and above all the belief in a Chosen Race 77 Mayers also shows that Chesterton portrayed Jews not only as culturally and religiously distinct but racially as well In The Feud of the Foreigner 1920 he said that the Jew is a foreigner far more remote from us than is a Bavarian from a Frenchman he is divided by the same type of division as that between us and a Chinaman or a Hindoo He not only is not but never was of the same race 77 In The Everlasting Man while writing about human sacrifice Chesterton suggested that medieval stories about Jews killing children might have resulted from a distortion of genuine cases of devil worship Chesterton wrote T he Hebrew prophets were perpetually protesting against the Hebrew race relapsing into an idolatry that involved such a war upon children and it is probable enough that this abominable apostasy from the God of Israel has occasionally appeared in Israel since in the form of what is called ritual murder not of course by any representative of the religion of Judaism but by individual and irresponsible diabolists who did happen to be Jews 77 88 The American Chesterton Society has devoted a whole issue of its magazine Gilbert to defending Chesterton against charges of antisemitism 89 Likewise Ann Farmer author of Chesterton and the Jews Friend Critic Defender 90 91 writes Public figures from Winston Churchill to Wells proposed remedies for the Jewish problem the seemingly endless cycle of anti Jewish persecution all shaped by their worldviews As patriots Churchill and Chesterton embraced Zionism both were among the first to defend the Jews from Nazism concluding that A defender of Jews in his youth a conciliator as well as a defender GKC returned to the defence when the Jewish people needed it most 92 Opposition to eugenics edit In Eugenics and Other Evils Chesterton attacked eugenics as Parliament was moving towards passage of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913 Some backing the ideas of eugenics called for the government to sterilise people deemed mentally defective this view did not gain popularity but the idea of segregating them from the rest of society and thereby preventing them from reproducing did gain traction These ideas disgusted Chesterton who wrote It is not only openly said it is eagerly urged that the aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children 93 He condemned the proposed wording for such measures as being so vague as to apply to anyone including Every tramp who is sulk every labourer who is shy every rustic who is eccentric can quite easily be brought under such conditions as were designed for homicidal maniacs That is the situation and that is the point we are already under the Eugenist State and nothing remains to us but rebellion 93 He derided such ideas as founded on nonsense as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one s fellow citizens as a kind of chemical experiment 93 Chesterton mocked the idea that poverty was a result of bad breeding it is a strange new disposition to regard the poor as a race as if they were a colony of Japs or Chinese coolies The poor are not a race or even a type It is senseless to talk about breeding them for they are not a breed They are in cold fact what Dickens describes a dustbin of individual accidents of damaged dignity and often of damaged gentility 93 94 Chesterton s fence edit Chesterton s fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood The quotation is from Chesterton s 1929 book The Thing Why I Am a Catholic in the chapter The Drift from Domesticity In the matter of reforming things as distinct from deforming them there is one plain and simple principle a principle which will probably be called a paradox There exists in such a case a certain institution or law let us say for the sake of simplicity a fence or gate erected across a road The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says I don t see the use of this let us clear it away To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer If you don t see the use of it I certainly won t let you clear it away Go away and think Then when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it I may allow you to destroy it 95 Distributism edit nbsp Self portrait based on the distributist slogan Three acres and a cow Inspired by Leo XIII s encyclical Rerum Novarum Chesterton s brother Cecil and his friend Hilaire Belloc were instrumental in developing the economic philosophy of distributism a word Belloc coined Gilbert embraced their views and particularly after Cecil s death in World War I became one of the foremost distributists and the newspaper whose care he inherited from Cecil which ultimately came to be named G K s Weekly became its most consistent advocate Distributism stands as a third way against both unrestrained capitalism and socialism advocating a wide distribution of both property and political power Legacy editThe author James Parker in The Atlantic gave a modern appraisal In his vastness and mobility Chesterton continues to elude definition He was a Catholic convert and an oracular man of letters a pneumatic cultural presence an aphorist with the production rate of a pulp novelist Poetry criticism fiction biography columns public debate Chesterton was a journalist he was a metaphysician He was a reactionary he was a radical He was a modernist acutely alive to the rupture in consciousness that produced Eliot s The Hollow Men he was an anti modernist a parochial Englishman and a post Victorian gasbag he was a mystic wedded to eternity All of these cheerfully contradictory things are true for the final resolving fact that he was a genius Touched once by the live wire of his thought you don t forget it His prose is supremely entertaining the stately outlines of an older heavier rhetoric punctually convulsed by what he once called in reference to the Book of Job earthquake irony He fulminates wittily he cracks jokes like thunder His message a steady illumination beaming and clanging through every lens and facet of his creativity was really very straightforward get on your knees modern man and praise God 96 Possible launch of sainthood cause after earlier attempt to launch was put on hold edit The Bishop Emeritus of Northampton Peter John Haworth Doyle in 2012 had opened a preliminary investigation into possibly launching a cause for beatification and then canonization for possible sainthood but eventually decided not to open the cause The current Bishop of Northampton David James Oakley has agreed to preach at a Mass during a Chesterton pilgrimage in England the route goes through London and Beaconsfield which are both connected to his life and some have speculated he may be more favourable to the idea If the cause is actually opened at the diocesan level the Vatican must also give approval that nothing stands in the way the nihil obstat then he could be given the title Servant of God It is not known if his alleged anti Semitism which would be considered a serious matter by the Church if it is true may have played a role His life and writings and views and what he did for others would be closely examined in any case 97 Literary edit Chesterton s socio economic system of Distributism affected the sculptor Eric Gill who established a commune of Catholic artists at Ditchling in Sussex The Ditchling group developed a journal called The Game in which they expressed many Chestertonian principles particularly anti industrialism and an advocacy of religious family life citation needed His novel The Man Who Was Thursday inspired the Irish Republican leader Michael Collins with the idea that If you didn t seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out 98 Collins s favourite work of Chesterton was The Napoleon of Notting Hill and he was almost fanatically attached to it according to his friend Sir William Darling 99 His column in the Illustrated London News on 18 September 1909 had a profound effect on Mahatma Gandhi 100 P N Furbank asserts that Gandhi was thunderstruck when he read it 101 while Martin Green notes that Gandhi was so delighted with this that he told Indian Opinion to reprint it 102 Another convert was Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan who said that the book What s Wrong with the World changed his life in terms of ideas and religion 103 The author Neil Gaiman stated that he grew up reading Chesterton in his school s library and that The Napoleon of Notting Hill influenced his own book Neverwhere Gaiman based the character Gilbert from the comic book The Sandman on Chesterton 104 and Good Omens the novel Gaiman co wrote with Terry Pratchett is dedicated to Chesterton The Argentine author and essayist Jorge Luis Borges cited Chesterton as influential on his fiction telling interviewer Richard Burgin that Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story 105 Education edit Chesterton s many references to education and human formation have inspired a variety of educators including the 44 schools of the Chesterton Schools Network which includes the Chesterton Academy founded by Dale Ahlquist 106 and the Italian Scuola Libera G K Chesterton in San Benedetto del Tronto Marche 107 The publisher and educator Christopher Perrin who completed his doctoral work on Chesterton makes frequent reference to Chesterton in his work with classical schools 108 Namesakes edit In 1974 Father Ian Boyd C S B founded The Chesterton Review a scholarly journal devoted to Chesterton and his circle The journal is published by the G K Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture based in Seton Hall University South Orange New Jersey 109 In 1996 Dale Ahlquist founded the American Chesterton Society to explore and promote Chesterton s writings 110 In 2008 a Catholic high school Chesterton Academy opened in the Minneapolis area In the same year Scuola Libera Chesterton opened in San Benedetto del Tronto Italy 111 In 2012 a crater on the planet Mercury was named Chesterton after the author 112 In 2014 G K Chesterton Academy of Chicago a Catholic high school opened in Highland Park Illinois 113 A fictionalised G K Chesterton is the central character in the Young Chesterton Chronicles a series of young adult adventure novels by John McNichol 114 115 and in the G K Chesterton Mystery series a series of detective novels by the Australian author Kel Richards 116 Major works editMain article G K Chesterton bibliography Books edit Chesterton Gilbert Keith 1904 Ward M ed The Napoleon of Notting Hill 1903 Robert Browning Macmillan 117 1905 Heretics John Lane 1906 Charles Dickens A Critical Study Dodd Mead amp Co p 299 1908a The Man Who Was Thursday 1908b Orthodoxy 1911a The Innocence of Father Brown 1911b The Ballad of the White Horse 1912 Manalive 1916 The Crimes of England Father Brown short stories detective fiction 1920 Ward M ed The New Jerusalem archived from the original on 15 January 2017 1922 The Man Who Knew Too Much Simon amp Brown ISBN 1731700563 1922 Eugenics and Other Evils 1923 Saint Francis of Assisi 1925 The Everlasting Man 1925 William Cobbett 1933 Saint Thomas Aquinas 1935 The Well and the Shallows 1936 The Autobiography 1950 Ward M ed The Common Man archived from the original on 15 January 2017Short stories edit The Trees of Pride 1922 The Crime of the Communist Collier s Weekly July 1934 The Three Horsemen Collier s Weekly April 1935 The Ring of the Lovers Collier s Weekly April 1935 A Tall Story Collier s Weekly April 1935 The Angry Street A Bad Dream Famous Fantastic Mysteries February 1947 Plays edit Magic 1913 References editCitations edit Ker Ian 2003 The Catholic Revival in English Literature 1845 1961 Newman Hopkins Belloc Chesterton Greene Waugh University of Notre Dame Press Obituary Variety 17 June 1936 a b O Connor John 1937 Father Brown on Chesterton PDF Frederick Muller Ltd Archived PDF from the original on 3 April 2013 Retrieved 7 April 2013 a b Orthodoxologist Time 11 October 1943 archived from the original on 20 November 2009 retrieved 24 October 2008 Douglas 1974 Like his friend Ronald Knox he was both entertainer and Christian apologist The world never fails to appreciate the combination when it is well done even evangelicals sometimes give the impression of bestowing a waiver on deviations if a man is enough of a genius Ker 2011 p 485 Douglas J D 24 May 1974 G K Chesterton the Eccentric Prince of Paradox Christianity Today Archived from the original on 1 November 2014 Retrieved 8 July 2014 Chesterton Gilbert Keith 2002 Covjek koji je previse znao in Croatian Translated by Darko Mitin Zlatar Partenon p 134 ISBN 953 6840 03 0 Bergonzi Bernard 2004 Chesterton Gilbert Keith G K C 1874 1936 writer Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 32392 ISBN 978 0 19 861412 8 Subscription or UK public library membership required Simkin John G K Chesterton Spartacus Educational Archived from the original on 4 February 2015 Retrieved 4 February 2015 Haushalter Walter M 1912 Gilbert Keith Chesterton The University Magazine vol XI p 236 via Internet Archive Ker 2011 p 1 Ker 2011 p 13 Chesterton 1936 Chapter IV Ker 2011 p 265 266 Chesterton and the child A Collection of Papers presented at a conference of the Australian Chesterton Society on October 20 2018 at Campion College Australia Sydney PDF Sydney Australia Australian Chesterton Society 2018 p 41 Archived PDF from the original on 1 August 2019 Retrieved 13 November 2019 Ker 2011 p 162 163 a b Ker 2011 p 41 Chesterton G K 1911 The Flying Stars The Innocence of Father Brown London Cassell amp Company Ltd p 118 Do We agree A Debate between G K Chesterton and Bernard Shaw with Hilaire Belloc in the Chair London C Palmer 1928 Clarence Darrow debate American Chesterton Society 30 April 2012 Archived from the original on 21 May 2014 Retrieved 21 May 2014 G K Chesterton January 1915 Clarence Darrow digital collection University of Minnesota Law School Archived from the original on 21 May 2014 Retrieved 21 May 2014 Chesterton 1936 pp 231 235 Programme The Trial of John Jasper for the Murder of Edwin Drood at King s Hall Covent Garden 7 January 1914 A copy in a private collection annotated by the original owner Wilson A N 1984 Hilaire Belloc London Hamish Hamilton p 219 Cornelius Judson K Literary Humour Mumbai St Paul s Books p 144 ISBN 978 81 7108 374 9 Wodehouse P G 1972 The World of Mr Mulliner Barrie and Jenkins p 172 Ward 1944 chapter XV Chesterton 1936 Chapter 16 Ker 2011 a b Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874 1936 Catholic Authors Archived from the original on 11 May 2011 Retrieved 23 March 2011 Nomination archive Gilbert K Chesterton nobelprize org Detection Club The Gadetection Detection Club The gadetection pbworks com w page 7930445 Detection 20Club 2C 20The Lauer Quentin 1991 G K Chesterton Philosopher Without Portfolio New York City NY Fordham University Press p 25 Barker Dudley 1973 G K Chesterton A Biography New York Stein and Day p 287 Gaspari Antonio 14 July 2009 Blessed G K Chesterton Interview on Possible Beatification of English Author Zenit The World Seen from Rome Rome Archived from the original on 15 June 2010 Retrieved 18 October 2010 Bridges Horace J 1914 G K Chesterton as Theologian In Ethical Addresses Philadelphia The American Ethical Union pp 21 44 Caldecott Stratford 1999 Was G K Chesterton a Theologian The Chesterton Review Rep by CERC Catholic Education Research Center Archived 13 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine Ahlquist Dale 2006 Common Sense 101 Lessons from G K Chesterton Ignatius Press p 286 Douglas J D G K Chesterton the Eccentric Prince of Paradox Archived 20 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine Christianity Today 8 January 2001 Gray Robert Paradox Was His Doxy Archived 10 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine The American Conservative 23 March 2009 a b Eliot T S 20 June 1936 Gilbert Chesterton by T S Eliot The Tablet 167 5015 785 Archived from the original on 1 August 2020 Retrieved 19 April 2020 Hasnes Geir 2022 G K Chesterton A Bibliography Kongsberg Norway Classica forlag ISBN 978 82 7610 013 6 Mccarthy John P 1982 The Historical Vision of Chesterbelloc Modern Age Vol XXVI No 2 pp 175 182 McInerny Ralph Chesterbelloc Archived 29 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine Catholic Dossier May June 1998 Shaw George Bernard 1918 Belloc and Chesterton Archived 11 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine The New Age South Africa Vol II No 16 pp 309 311 Lynd Robert 1919 Mr G K Chesterton and Mr Hilaire Belloc In Old and New Masters London T Fisher Unwin Ltd pp 25 41 McInerny Ralph The Chesterbelloc Thing Archived 29 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine The Catholic Thing 30 September 2008 Wells H G 1908 About Chesterton and Belloc Archived 11 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine The New Age South Africa Vol II No 11 pp 209 210 Rep in Social Forces in England and America 1914 Belloc and the Distributists The American Review November 1933 Belloc Hilaire 1940 On the Place of Chesterton in English Letters London Sheed amp Ward Archived from the original on 17 February 2020 Retrieved 19 April 2020 Chesterton 1905 chapter 7 Misguided Superman Fan George Bernard Shaw 1856 1950 Christian History Institute Chesterton 1905 chapter 4 Chesterton 1905 chapter 20 Vanauken S A Severe Mercy New York Harper amp Row 1977 p 90 Letter to Sheldon Vanauken Archived 3 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine 14 December 1950 Lewis Clive Staples The Collected Letters vol 2 p 823 The Christian Century 6 June 1962 Routley Erik 2005 An English speaking Hymnal Guide GIA publications p 129 Edmondson Jacqueline ed 2013 Music in American Life An Encyclopedia of the Songs Styles Stars and Stories That Shaped Our Culture Santa Barbara CA Greenwood p 39 Bruce Dickinson Faith And Music 1999 Archived from the original on 18 February 2017 Retrieved 11 September 2017 via YouTube Gilson Etienne 1987 Letter to Chesterton s editor in Pieper Josef ed Guide to Thomas Aquinas University of Notre Dame Press pp 6 7 Sheen Fulton J 2008 Treasure in Clay New York Image Books Doubleday p 79 Sheen Fulton J God and Intelligence IVE Press Ahlquist Dale 2003 G K Chesterton The Apostle of Common Sense San Francisco Ignatius Press Chesterton 1908b chapter 3 The Suicide of Thought gt dmu ac uk Archived from the original on 8 August 2007 Retrieved 14 February 2008 The Blunders of Our Parties Illustrated London News 19 April 1924 Holroyd Michael 1989 Bernard Shaw Vol 2 London Chatto amp Windus p 214 ISBN 978 0701133504 Ffinch Michael 1986 G K Chesterton A Biography New York Harper and Row p 228 29 ISBN 0 06 252576 X Chesterton Gilbert Keith 1914 The Barbarism of Berlin London Cassell and Company Chesterton Gilbert Keith 1915 The Crimes of England London C Palmer amp Hayward Chesterton G K 1920 The New Jerusalem Hodder and Stoughton chapter 13 Last orders The Guardian 9 April 2005 archived from the original on 27 August 2006 retrieved 2 July 2006 Chesterton Gilbert G K Chesterton to the Editor The Nation 18 March 1911 a b c d e f g Mayers Simon 2013 Chesterton s Jews Stereotypes and Caricatures in the Literature and Journalism of G K Chesterton Simon Mayers pp 85 87 ISBN 9781490392462 Archived from the original on 29 May 2021 Retrieved 4 October 2020 Gardner Martin 1989 Introduction Four Faultless Felons Dover Publications Donaldson Frances 2011 The Marconi Scandal Bloomsbury Publishing p 51 ISBN 978 1448205547 Archived from the original on 1 August 2020 Retrieved 24 October 2016 Endelman Todd M 2002 The Jews of Britain 1656 to 2000 University of California Press p 155 ISBN 9780520227194 Archived from the original on 1 August 2020 Retrieved 30 May 2017 Julius Anthony 2010 Trials of the Diaspora A History of Anti Semitism in England Oxford University Press p 422 Chesterton G K 1917 A Short History of England Chatto and Windus pp 108 109 Chesterton 1920 Chapter 13 a b Chesterton 1920 Chapter 13 Pearce Joseph 2005 Literary Giants Literary Catholics San Francisco Ignatius Press p 95 ISBN 978 1 58617 077 6 Ward 1944 p 265 The Collected Works of G K Chesterton Archived 1 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine Volume 5 Ignatius Press 1987 page 593 Chesterton G K 2007 The Everlasting Man Mineola NY Dover publications p 117 Was G K Chesterton Anti Semitic Archived 29 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine by Dale Ahlquist Ann Farmer Chesterton and the Jews Friend Critic Defender Angelico Press 2015 Ahlquist Dale Defending the Defender of the Jews www catholicworldreport com Archived from the original on 10 April 2021 The debate Was Chesterton an anti Semite 28 August 2019 Archived from the original on 1 August 2020 a b c d Chesterton Gilbert Keith 1922 Eugenics and Other Evils London UK Cassell and Company The Enemy of Eugenics Archived 23 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine by Russell Sparkes Chesterton G K 1929 The Drift from Domesticity Archived 6 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine In The Thing London Sheed amp Ward p 35 Parker James April 2015 A Most Unlikely Saint The case for canonizing G K Chesterton the bombastic man of letters and paradoxical militant for God The Atlantic 15 April Issue Archived from the original on 17 May 2020 Retrieved 19 April 2020 A pilgrimage in England traces G K Chesterton s path in hope of his beatification Forester Margery 2006 Michael Collins The Lost Leader Gill amp MacMillan p 35 Mackay James 1996 Michael Collins A Life London England Mainstream Publishing p Chapter 2 Gandhi Rajmohan 2007 Gandhi The Man His People and the Empire Los Angeles University of California Press pp 139 141 Furbank P N 1974 Chesterton the Edwardian in Sullivan John ed G K Chesterton A Centenary Appraisal Harper and Row Green Martin B 2009 Gandhi Voice of a New Age Revolution Axios p 266 Marchand Philip 1998 Marshall McLuhan The Medium and the Messenger A Biography Cambridge Mass MIT Press pp 28 30 Bender Hy 2000 The Sandman Companion A Dreamer s Guide to the Award Winning Comic Series DC Comics ISBN 1 56389 644 3 Burgin Richard 1969 Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges New York Holt Rinehart and Winston p 35 Our Network Schools Chesterton Schools Network Retrieved 23 December 2022 https www scuolachesterton org The Teacher as Muse Virtue from the Great Hearts Institute Retrieved 23 December 2022 The Chesterton Review Philosophy Documentation Center Archived from the original on 12 May 2021 Retrieved 12 May 2021 Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton Apostolate of Common Sense Archived from the original on 26 December 2019 Retrieved 13 November 2019 Scuola Libera G K Chesterton Chesterton Schools Network 16 April 2019 Retrieved 8 July 2021 Chesterton Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature United States Geological Survey 17 September 2012 archived from the original on 18 February 2013 retrieved 18 September 2012 School built around G K Chesterton to open in Highland Park United States Chicago highlandpark suntimes 19 March 2014 archived from the original on 25 May 2014 retrieved 25 May 2014 McNichol John 2017 The Tripods Attack The Young Chesterton Chronicles Book 1 Hillside Education ISBN 978 0 9991706 0 1 McNichol John 2021 The Emperor of North America Volume 2 of Young Chesterton Chronicles Hillside Education ISBN 978 1 7331383 4 5 Richards Kel 2002 Murder in the Mummy s Tomb A G K Chesterton Mystery RiverOak Pub ISBN 978 1589199637 Review of Robert Browning by G K Chesterton The Athenaeum 3946 744 746 13 June 1903 Sources edit Cited biographies Barker Dudley 1973 G K Chesterton A Biography London England Constable ISBN 978 0 09 457830 2 Ker Ian 2011 G K Chesterton A Biography Oxford England Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 960128 8 Pearce Joseph 1996 Wisdom and Innocence A Life of G K Chesterton London England Hodder and Stoughton ISBN 978 0 34 067132 0 Ward Maisie 1944 Gilbert Keith Chesterton Sheed amp WardFurther reading editAhlquist Dale 2012 The Complete Thinker The Marvelous Mind of G K Chesterton Ignatius Press ISBN 978 1 58617 675 4 2003 G K Chesterton Apostle of Common Sense Ignatius Press ISBN 978 0 89870 857 8 Belmonte Kevin 2011 Defiant Joy The Remarkable Life and Impact of G K Chesterton Nashville Tenn Thomas Nelson Blackstock Alan R 2012 The Rhetoric of Redemption Chesterton Ethical Criticism and the Common Man New York Peter Lang Publishing Braybrooke Patrick 1922 Gilbert Keith Chesterton London Chelsea Publishing Company Cammaerts Emile 1937 The Laughing Prophet The Seven Virtues nd G K Chesterton London Methuen amp Co Ltd Campbell W E 1908 G K Chesterton Inquisitor and Democrat Archived 6 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine The Catholic World Vol LXXXVIII pp 769 782 Campbell W E 1909 G K Chesterton Catholic Apologist The Catholic World Vol LXXXIX No 529 pp 1 12 Chesterton Cecil 1908 G K Chesterton A Criticism London Alston Rivers Rep by John Lane Company 1909 Clipper Lawrence J 1974 G K Chesterton New York Twayne Publishers Coates John 1984 Chesterton and the Edwardian Cultural Crisis Hull University Press Coates John 2002 G K Chesterton as Controversialist Essayist Novelist and Critic Lewiston New York Edwin Mellen Press Conlon D J 1987 G K Chesterton A Half Century of Views Oxford University Press Cooney A 1999 G K Chesterton One Sword at Least London Third Way ISBN 978 0 9535077 1 9 Coren Michael 2001 1989 Gilbert The Man who was G K Chesterton Vancouver Regent College Publishing ISBN 9781573831956 OCLC 45190713 Corrin Jay P 1981 G K Chesterton amp Hilaire Belloc The Battle Against Modernity Ohio University Press Ervine St John G 1922 G K Chesterton In Some Impressions of my Elders New York The Macmillan Company pp 90 112 Ffinch Michael 1986 G K Chesterton Harper amp Row Gilbert Magazine November December 2008 Vol 12 No 2 3 Special Issue Chesterton amp The Jews Haldane John Chesterton s Philosophy of Education philosophy Vol 65 No 251 Jan 1990 pp 65 80 Hitchens Christopher 2012 The Reactionary Archived 10 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine The Atlantic Herts B Russell 1914 Gilbert K Chesterton Defender of the Discarded In Depreciations New York Albert amp Charles Boni pp 65 86 Hollis Christopher 1970 The Mind of Chesterton London Hollis amp Carter Hunter Lynette 1979 G K Chesterton Explorations in Allegory London Macmillan Press Jaki Stanley 1986 Chesterton A Seer of Science University of Illinois Press Jaki Stanley 1986 Chesterton s Landmark Year In Chance or Reality and Other Essays University Press of America Kenner Hugh 1947 Paradox in Chesterton New York Sheed amp Ward Kimball Roger 2011 G K Chesterton Master of Rejuvenation Archived 27 September 2012 at the Wayback Machine The New Criterion Vol XXX p 26 Kirk Russell 1971 Chesterton Madmen and Madhouses Modern Age Vol XV No 1 pp 6 16 Knight Mark 2004 Chesterton and Evil Fordham University Press Lea F A 1947 G K Chesterton In Donald Attwater ed Modern Christian Revolutionaries New York Devin Adair Co McCleary Joseph R 2009 The Historical Imagination of G K Chesterton Locality Patriotism and Nationalism Taylor amp Francis McLuhan Marshall January 1936 G K Chesterton A Practical Mystic Archived 29 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine Dalhousie Review 15 4 455 464 McNichol J 2008 The Young Chesterton Chronicles vol Book One The Tripods Attack Manchester NH Sophia Institute ISBN 978 1 933184 26 5 Oddie William 2010 Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy The Making of GKC 1874 1908 Oxford University Press Orage Alfred Richard 1922 G K Chesterton on Rome and Germany In Readers and Writers 1917 1921 London George Allen amp Unwin pp 155 161 Oser Lee 2007 The Return of Christian Humanism Chesterton Eliot Tolkien and the Romance of History University of Missouri Press Paine Randall 1999 The Universe and Mr Chesterton Sherwood Sugden ISBN 978 0 89385 511 6 Pearce Joseph 1997 Wisdom and Innocence A Life of G K Chesterton Ignatius Press ISBN 978 0 89870 700 7 Peck William George 1920 Mr G K Chesterton and the Return to Sanity In From Chaos to Catholicism London George Allen amp Unwin pp 52 92 Raymond E T 1919 Mr G K Chesterton In All amp Sundry London T Fisher Unwin pp 68 76 Schall James V 2000 Schall on Chesterton Timely Essays on Timeless Paradoxes Catholic University of America Press Scott William T 1912 Chesterton and Other Essays Cincinnati Jennings amp Graham Seaber Luke 2011 G K Chesterton s Literary Influence on George Orwell A Surprising Irony Lewiston New York Edwin Mellen Press Sheed Wilfrid 1971 Chesterbelloc and the Jews The New York Review of Books Vol XVII No 3 Shuster Norman 1922 The Adventures of a Journalist G K Chesterton In The Catholic Spirit in Modern English Literature New York The Macmillan Company pp 229 248 Slosson Edwin E 1917 G K Chesterton Knight Errant of Orthodoxy In Six Major Prophets Boston Little Brown and Company pp 129 189 Smith Marion Couthouy 1921 The Rightness of G K Chesterton The Catholic World Vol CXIII No 678 pp 163 168 Stapleton Julia 2009 Christianity Patriotism and Nationhood The England of G K Chesterton Lanham MD Lexington Books Sullivan John 1974 G K Chesterton A Centenary Appraisal London Paul Elek ISBN 978 0 236 17628 1 Tonquedec Joseph de 1920 G K Chesterton ses Idees et son Caractere Nouvelle Librairie National Ward Maisie 1952 Return to Chesterton London Sheed amp Ward West Julius 1915 G K Chesterton A Critical Study London Martin Secker Williams Donald T 2006 Mere Humanity G K Chesterton C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien on the Human ConditionExternal links editG K Chesterton at Wikipedia s sister projects nbsp Media from Commons nbsp Quotations from Wikiquote nbsp Texts from Wikisource nbsp Data from Wikidata Works by G K Chesterton in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by G K Chesterton at Project Gutenberg Works by G K Gilbert Keith Chesterton at Faded Page Canada Works by or about G K Chesterton at Internet Archive Works by G K Chesterton at LibriVox public domain audiobooks nbsp G K Chesterton at Curlie Works by G K Chesterton at HathiTrust Archival material relating to G K Chesterton UK National Archives nbsp What s Wrong GKC in Periodicals Articles by G K Chesterton in periodicals with critical annotations The American Chesterton Society retrieved 28 October 2010 G K Chesterton Quotidiana G K Chesterton research collection at The Marion E Wade Center at Wheaton College G K Chesterton Archival Collection at the University of St Michael s College at the University of Toronto Newspaper clippings about G K Chesterton in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Listen G K Chesterton works on Youtube Scuola Libera G K Chesterton retrieved 3 September 2023 Societa Chestertoniana Italiana retrieved 3 September 2023 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title G K Chesterton amp oldid 1185494565, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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