Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London, England on the
29th of May,
1874. Though he considered himself a mere "rollicking journalist,"
he was
actually a prolific and gifted writer in virtually every area of
literature. A man of strong opinions and enormously talented at defending
them, his exuberant personality nevertheless allowed him to maintain warm
friendships with people--such as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells--with
whom he vehemently disagreed.
Chesterton had no difficulty standing up for what he believed.
He was one
of the few journalists to oppose the Boer War. His 1922 "Eugenics and Other
Evils" attacked what was at that time the most progressive of all ideas,
the idea that the human race could and should breed a superior version of
itself. In the Nazi experience, history demonstrated the wisdom of his once
"reactionary" views.
His poetry runs the gamut from the comic 1908 "On Running
After One's Hat"
to dark and serious ballads. During the dark days of 1940, when Britain
stood virtually alone against the armed might of Nazi Germany, these lines
from his 1911 Ballad of the White Horse were often quoted:
I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
Though not written for a scholarly audience, his biographies
of authors and
historical figures like Charles Dickens and St. Francis of Assisi often
contain brilliant insights into their subjects. His Father Brown mystery
stories, written between 1911 and 1936, are still being read and adapted
for television.
His politics fitted with his deep distrust of concentrated
wealth and power
of any sort...Some see in him the father of the "small is beautiful"
movement and a newspaper article by him is credited with provoking Gandhi to
seek a "genuine" nationalism for India rather than one that imitated
the British.
Heretics belongs to yet another area of literature at which
Chesterton
excelled. A fun-loving and gregarious man, he was nevertheless troubled in
his adolescence by thoughts of suicide. In Christianity he found the
answers to the dilemmas and paradoxes he saw in life. Other books in that
same series include his 1908 Orthodoxy (written in response to attacks on
this book) and his 1925 The Everlasting Man.
Chesterton died on the 14th of June, 1936 in Beaconsfield,
Buckinghamshire,
England. During his life he published 69 books and at least another ten
based on his writings have been published after his death. Many of those
books are still in print. Ignatius Press is systematically publishing his
collected writings.