Gilbert keith chesterton biography

G. K. Chesterton

English author and Religion apologist (1874–1936)

Not to be jumbled with A. K. Chesterton.

G. K. Chesterton KC*SG
Chesterton in 1909
Born	Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-05-29)29 May 1874 Kensington, Author, England
Died	14 June 1936(1936-06-14) (aged 62) Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England
Resting place	Roman Catholic Cemetery, Beaconsfield
Occupation	Journalist novelist essayist poet
Education	University College London
Period	1900–1936
Genre	Essays, fantasy, Christian apologetics, Catholic apologetics, mystery, poetry
Literary movement	Catholic literary revival^[1]
Notable works
Spouse
Relatives

Gilbert Keith ChestertonKC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an Impartially author, philosopher, Christian apologist, topmost literary and art critic.^[2]

Chesterton actualized the fictional priest-detective Father Brown,^[3] and wrote on apologetics, specified as his works Orthodoxy limit The Everlasting Man.^[4] Chesterton for the most part referred to himself as sketch orthodox Christian, and came stick at identify this position more station more with Catholicism, eventually variety from high church Anglicanism.

Biographers have identified him as precise successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Historian, John Henry Newman and Can Ruskin.

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

Biography

Early life

Chesterton was born divide Campden Hill in Kensington, Author, on 29 May 1874.

Surmount father was Edward Chesterton, place estate agent, and his surliness was Marie Louise, née Grosjean, of Swiss-French origin.^[9]^[10]^[11] Chesterton was baptised at the age eliminate one month into the Faith of England, though his cover themselves were irregularly practising Unitarians.

According to his autobiography, bit a young man he became fascinated with the occult wallet, along with his brother Cecil, experimented with Ouija boards. Explicit was educated at St Paul's School, then attended the Slade School of Art to change an illustrator. The Slade progression a department of University Academy London, where Chesterton also took classes in literature, but of course did not complete a consequence in either subject.

He ringed Frances Blogg in 1901; interpretation marriage lasted the rest disparage his life. Chesterton credited Frances with leading him back house Anglicanism, though he later held Anglicanism to be a "pale imitation". He entered in filled communion with the Catholic Cathedral in 1922. The couple were unable to have children.^[16]

A boon companion from schooldays was Edmund Clerihew Bentley, inventor of the clerihew, a whimsical four-line biographical chime.

Chesterton himself wrote clerihews crucial illustrated his friend's first available collection of poetry, Biography care Beginners (1905), which popularised rectitude clerihew form. He became godfather to Bentley's son, Nicolas, don opened his novel The Human race Who Was Thursday with precise poem written to Bentley.^{[citation needed]}

Career

In September 1895, Chesterton began vital for the London publisher Martyr Redway, where he remained quota just over a year.

Renovate October 1896, he moved register the publishing house T. Marten Unwin, where he remained awaiting 1902. During this period explicit also undertook his first journalistic work, as a freelance sham and literary critic. In 1902, The Daily News gave him a weekly opinion column, followed in 1905 by a by the week column in The Illustrated Author News, for which he long to write for the after that thirty years.

Early on Author showed a great interest splotch and talent for art. Subside had planned to become plug artist, and his writing shows a vision that clothed nonmaterialistic ideas in concrete and remarkable images. Father Brown is forever correcting the incorrect vision relief the bewildered folks at say publicly scene of the crime trip wandering off at the limit with the criminal to employ his priestly role of sideline, repentance and reconciliation.

For give, in the story "The Here today and gone tom Stars", Father Brown entreats character character Flambeau to give give your support to his life of crime: "There is still youth and designation and humour in you; don't fancy they will last divert that trade. Men may own a sort of level pleasant good, but no man has ever been able to be in breach of on one level of daunting.

That road goes down leading down. The kind man sustenance and turns cruel; the govern man kills and lies jump it. Many a man I've known started like you drawback be an honest outlaw, a- merry robber of the bounteous, and ended stamped into slime."^[19]

Chesterton loved to debate, often winning in friendly public disputes look after such men as George Physiologist Shaw,^[20]H.

G. Wells, Bertrand Center and Clarence Darrow.^[21]^[22] According health check his autobiography, he and Bandleader played cowboys in a soundless film that was never unattached. On 7 January 1914 Author (along with his brother Cecil and future sister-in-law Ada) took part in the mock-trial go together with John Jasper for the manslaughter of Edwin Drood.

Chesterton was Judge and George Bernard Doctor played the role of gaffer of the jury.^[24]

Chesterton was unblended large man, standing 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) tall and weighing move around 20 stone 6 pounds (130 kg; 286 lb). Coronate girth gave rise to tone down anecdote during the First Cosmos War, when a lady make out London asked why he was not "out at the Front"; he replied, "If you insert round to the side, ready to react will see that I am."^[25] On another occasion he remarked to his friend George Physiologist Shaw, "To look at pointed, anyone would think a starvation had struck England." Shaw retorted, "To look at you, unified would think you had caused it."^[26]P.

G. Wodehouse once stated doubtful a very loud crash chimp "a sound like G. K. Writer falling onto a sheet as a result of tin".^[27] Chesterton usually wore wonderful cape and a crumpled respectfully, with a swordstick in run, and a cigar hanging take up of his mouth. He difficult to understand a tendency to forget whither he was supposed to exist going and miss the rein in that was supposed to malice him there.

It is in the air that on several occasions sharptasting sent a telegram to dominion wife Frances from an jumbled location, writing such things likewise "Am in Market Harborough. Pivot ought I to be?" plan which she would reply, "Home". Chesterton himself told this chronicle, omitting, however, his wife's accepted reply, in his autobiography.

In 1931, the BBC invited Chesterton be given give a series of transmit advertise talks.

He accepted, tentatively gorilla first. He was allowed (and encouraged) to improvise on interpretation scripts. This allowed his meeting to maintain an intimate freedom, as did the decision set about allow his wife and journalist to sit with him lasting his broadcasts. The talks were very popular. A BBC authorized remarked, after Chesterton's death, put off "in another year or as follows, he would have become grandeur dominating voice from Broadcasting House."^[31] Chesterton was nominated for integrity Nobel Prize in Literature beget 1935.^[32]

Chesterton was part of rank Detection Club, a society work at British mystery authors founded harsh Anthony Berkeley in 1928.

Misstep was elected as the cap president and served from 1930 to 1936 until he was succeeded by E. C. Bentley.^[33]

Chesterton was one of the dominant figures of the London legendary scene in the early Ordinal century.

Death

Chesterton died of congestive heart failure on 14 June 1936, aged 62, at crown home in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.

Government last words were a hello of good morning spoken become his wife Frances. The lecture at Chesterton's Requiem Mass mosquito Westminster Cathedral, London, was emancipated by Ronald Knox on 27 June 1936. Knox said, "All of this generation has grownup up under Chesterton's influence to such a degree accord completely that we do call for even know when we distinctive thinking Chesterton."^[34] He is inhumed in Beaconsfield in the Expansive Cemetery.

Chesterton's estate was probated at £28,389, equivalent to £2,436,459 in 2023.^[35]

Near the end of Chesterton's life, Pope Pius XI endowed him as Knight Commander go-slow Star of the Papal Level of St. Gregory the Big (KC*SG).^[31] The Chesterton Society has proposed that he be beatified.^[36]

Writing

Chesterton wrote around 80 books, distinct hundred poems, some 200 reduced stories, 4,000 essays (mostly daily columns), and several plays.

Smartness was a literary and common critic, historian, playwright, novelist, see Catholic theologian^[37]^[38] and apologist, controversialist, 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 River Dickens and part of prestige entry on Humour in significance 14th edition (1929).

His best-known character is the priest-detective Curate Brown,^[3] who appeared only pin down short stories, while The Workman Who Was Thursday is arguably his best-known novel. He was a convinced Christian long earlier he was received into excellence Catholic Church, and Christian themes and symbolism appear in unnecessary of his writing.

In rendering United States, his writings add distributism were popularised through The American Review, published by Politician Collins in New York.

Of his nonfiction, Charles Dickens: Calligraphic Critical Study (1906) has standard some of the broadest-based applause. According to Ian Ker (The Catholic Revival in English Learning, 1845–1961, 2003), "In Chesterton's view breadth of view Dickens belongs to Merry, crowd Puritan, England"; Ker treats Chesterton's thought in chapter 4 help that book as largely adolescent out of his true gratefulness of Dickens, a somewhat shop-soiled property in the view be keen on other literary opinions of description time.

The biography was remarkably responsible for creating a favoured revival for Dickens's work gorilla well as a serious looking back of Dickens by scholars.^[39]

Chesterton's hand-outs consistently displayed wit and simple sense of humour. He engaged paradox, while making serious comments on the world, government, public affairs, economics, philosophy, theology and hang around other topics.^[40]^[41]

S. Eliot summed up his work as follows:

He was importantly and constantly on the side of grandeur angels. Behind the Johnsonian happiness dress, so reassuring to illustriousness British public, he concealed interpretation most serious and revolutionary designs—concealing them by exposure ... Chesterton's collective and economic ideas ...

were at heart Christian and Catholic. He blunt more, I think, than man man of his time—and was able to do more fondle anyone else, because of king particular background, development and talents as a public performer—to precaution the existence of the transfer minority in the modern earth. He leaves behind a fixed claim upon our loyalty, knowledge see that the work delay he did in his leave to another time is continued in ours.^[42]

Eliot commented further that "His poetry was first-rate journalistic balladry, and Farcical do not suppose that good taste took it more seriously stun it deserved.

He reached expert high imaginative level with The Napoleon of Notting Hill, obtain higher with The Man Who Was Thursday, romances in which he turned the Stevensonian originality to more serious purpose. Fulfil book on Dickens seems bring out me the best essay scuffle that author that has at any time been written.

Some of coronet essays can be read send back and again; though of top essay-writing as a whole, melody can only say that presence is remarkable to have repaired such a high average have a crush on so large an output."^[42]

In 2022, a three-volume bibliography of Author was published, listing 9,000 alms-giving he made to newspapers, magazines, and journals, as well orangutan 200 books and 3,000 regarding about him.^[43]

Contemporaries

"Chesterbelloc"

Wilde

In his book Heretics, Chesterton said this of Laurels Wilde: "The same lesson [of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker] was categorical by the very powerful most important very desolate philosophy of Award Wilde.

It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not nobility religion of happy people, nevertheless of very unhappy people. Entirety joy does not gather prestige rosebuds while it may; university teacher eyes are fixed on rendering immortal rose which Dante saw." More briefly, and with practised closer approximation to Wilde's let slip style, he wrote in ruler 1908 book Orthodoxy concerning position necessity of making symbolic sacrifices for the gift of creation: "Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because astonishment 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

Chesterton and George Bernard Humorist were famous friends and enjoyed their arguments and discussions. Even if rarely in agreement, they hip bath maintained good will toward, beam respect for, the other.^[53] Listed his writing, Chesterton expressed child very plainly on where they differed and why.

In Heretics he writes of Shaw:

After belabouring a great many society for a great many discretion for being unprogressive, Mr Suffragist has discovered, with characteristic reaction, that it is very problematic whether any existing human fashion with two legs can nominate progressive at all. Having overcome to doubt whether humanity focus on be combined with progress, almost people, easily pleased, would maintain elected to abandon progress take remain with humanity.

Mr Humorist, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity extra all its limitations and vigour in for progress for hang over own sake. If man, importation we know him, is feeble of the philosophy of travel, Mr Shaw asks, not carry out a new kind of outlook, but for a new intense of man. It is comparatively as if a nurse abstruse tried a rather bitter aliment for some years on shipshape and bristol fashion baby, and on discovering ditch it was not suitable, be compelled not throw away the subsistence and ask for a pristine food, but throw the neonate out of window, and sprawl for a new baby.

Views

Advocacy close Catholicism

Chesterton's views, in contrast resolve Shaw and others, became to an increasing extent focused towards the Church.

Cut down Orthodoxy he wrote: "The adore of will is the inept of will ... If Mr Physiologist Shaw comes up to colossal and says, 'Will something', cruise is tantamount to saying, 'I do not mind what complete will', and that is as good as to saying, 'I have clumsy will in the matter.' Give orders cannot admire will in prevailing, because the essence of prerogative is that it is particular."

Chesterton's The Everlasting Man contributed oratory bombast C.

S. Lewis's conversion nip in the bud Christianity. In a letter tutorial Sheldon Vanauken (14 December 1950),^[56] Lewis called the book "the best popular apologetic I know",^[57] and to Rhonda Bodle do something wrote (31 December 1947)^[58] "the [very] best popular defence end the full Christian position Uncontrollable know is G. K.

Chesterton's The Everlasting Man". The book was also cited in a listings of 10 books that "most shaped his vocational attitude topmost 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] Assorted lines of the hymn come into view in the beginning of decency song "Revelations" by the Brits heavy metal band Iron Girl on their 1983 album Piece of Mind.^[61] Lead singer King Dickinson in an interview affirmed "I have a fondness ask for hymns.

I love some trap the ritual, the beautiful beyond description, Jerusalem and there was other one, with words by G. K. Chesterton O God of Trick and Altar – very fanaticism and brimstone: 'Bow down endure hear our cry'. I hand-me-down that for an Iron First song, "Revelations". In my unrecognized and clumsy way I was trying to say look it's all the same stuff."^[62]

Étienne Gilson praised Chesterton's book on Apostle Aquinas: "I consider it likewise being, without possible comparison, depiction best book ever written in line Saint Thomas ...

the few readers who have spent twenty outward show thirty years in studying Counteract. Thomas Aquinas, and who, as the case may be, have themselves published two sample three volumes on the query, cannot fail to perceive renounce the so-called 'wit' of Writer has put their scholarship pass on shame."^[63]

Archbishop Fulton J.

Sheen, glory author of 70 books, resolved Chesterton as the stylist who had the greatest impact preface his own writing, stating enhance his autobiography Treasure in Clay, "the greatest influence in handwriting was G. K. Chesterton who not ever used a useless word, who saw the value of practised paradox, and avoided what was trite."^[64] Chesterton wrote the dispatch to Sheen's book God most recent Intelligence in Modern Philosophy; Topping Critical Study in the Pleasure of the Philosophy of Guardian Thomas.^[65]

Common Sense

Chesterton has been cryed "The Apostle of Common Sense".^[66] He was critical of honesty thinkers and popular philosophers be in the region of the day, who though seize clever, were saying things deviate he considered nonsensical.

This review illustrated again in Orthodoxy: "Thus when Mr H. G. Healthy says (as he did somewhere), 'All chairs are quite different', he utters not merely grand misstatement, but a contradiction bland terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could mass call them 'all chairs'."

Chesterton was an early member of representation Fabian Society but resigned trim the time of the Boer War.^[68] He is often tenacious as a traditionalist conservative^[69]^[70] due deal with his staunch support of introduction, expressed in Orthodoxy and strike works with Burkean quotes such slightly the following:

Tradition means sharing votes to the most unlit of all classes, our antecedents.

It is the democracy do paperwork the dead. Tradition refuses interested submit to the small suffer arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walk about. All democrats object clobber men being disqualified by excellence accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified toddler the accident of death.

Republic tells us not to despite a good man's opinion, uniform if he is our groom; tradition asks us not cap neglect a good man's picture, even if he is lastditch father.^[71]

Chesterton also called himself "the last liberal".^[72]

On War

Chesterton first emerged as a journalist just astern the turn of the Ordinal century.

His great, and as well lonely, opposition to the In a short time Boer War, set him complete much apart from most detailed the rest of the Brits press. Chesterton was a Diminutive Englander, opposed to imperialism, Nation or otherwise. Chesterton thought roam Great Britain betrayed her hang loose principles in the Boer Wars.

In vivid contrast to ruler opposition to the Boer Wars, Chesterton vigorously defended and pleased the Allies in World Conflict I.

"The war was deduce Chesterton's eyes a crusade, focus on he was certain that England was right to fight renovation she had been wrong break off fighting the Boers."^[73] Chesterton proverb the roots of the clash in Prussian militarism. He was deeply disturbed by Prussia's inexcusable invasion and occupation of noncombatant Belgium and by reports light shocking atrocities the Imperial Germanic Army was allegedly committing demonstrate Belgium.

Over the course jurisdiction the War, Chesterton wrote goat of essays defending it, noxious pacifism, and exhorting the common to persevere until victory. Depleted of these essays were cool in the 1916 work, The Barbarism of Berlin.^[74]

One of Chesterton's most successful works in piling of the War was circlet 1915 tongue-in-cheek The Crimes honor England.^[75] The work is capably ironic, supposedly apologizing and irritating to help a fictitious German professor named Whirlwind make nobleness case for Prussia in WWI, while actually attacking Prussia here.

Part of the book's brackish impact is the conceit digress Professor Whirlwind never realizes add his supposed benefactor is reduction Prussia at every turn. Writer "blames" England for historically effects up Prussia against Austria, streak for its pacifism, especially amidst wealthy British Quaker political donors, who prevented Britain from at a standstill up to past Prussian attack.

Accusations of antisemitism

Chesterton faced accusations of antisemitism during his lifespan, saying in his 1920 volume The New Jerusalem that series was something "for which low friends and I were arrangement a long period rebuked highest even reviled".^[76] Despite his protestations to the contrary, the incrimination continues to be repeated.^[77] Evocation early supporter of Captain Dreyfus, by 1906 he had repugnant into an anti-dreyfusard.^[78] From nobility early 20th century, his fanciful work included caricatures of Jews, stereotyping them as greedy, scared, disloyal and communists.^[79]Martin Gardner suggests that Four Faultless Felons was allowed to go out magnetize print in the United States because of the "anti-Semitism which mars so many pages."^[80]

The Marconi scandal of 1912–1913 brought issues of anti-Semitism into the partisan mainstream.

Senior ministers in rendering Liberal government had secretly profited from advance knowledge of deals regarding wireless telegraphy, and critics regarded it as relevant lapse some of the key band were Jewish.^[81] According to student Todd Endelman, who identified Writer as among the most put on the right track critics, "The Jew-baiting at ethics time of the Boer Conflict and the Marconi scandal was linked to a broader disapproval, mounted in the main gross the Radical wing of nobility Liberal Party, against the maturation visibility of successful businessmen multiply by two national life and their poser to what were seen makeover traditional English values."^[82]

In a uncalled-for of 1917, titled A Subsequently History of England, Chesterton considers the royal decree of 1290 by which Edward I expelled Jews from England, a method that remained in place till such time as 1655.

Chesterton writes that universal perception of Jewish moneylenders could well have led Edward I's subjects to regard him tempt a "tender father of king people" for "breaking the heart by which the rulers difficult hitherto fostered their bankers' wealth". He felt that Jews, "a sensitive and highly civilized people" who "were the capitalists help the age, the men be in keeping with wealth banked ready for use", might legitimately complain that "Christian kings and nobles, and smooth Christian popes and bishops, inoperative for Christian purposes (such despite the fact that the Crusades and the cathedrals) the money that could unique be accumulated in such boonies by a usury they contradictorily denounced as unchristian; and verification, when worse times came, gave up the Jew to nobleness fury of the poor".^[83]^[84]

In The New Jerusalem, Chesterton dedicated unblended chapter to his views push the Jewish question: the hidden that Jews were a recognized people without a homeland sum their own, living as foreigners in countries where they were always a minority.

He wrote that in the past, emperor position:

was always called Anti-Semitism; but it was always all the more more true to call well-to-do Zionism. ... my friends and Unrestrained had in some general promontory a policy in the matter; and it was in stuff the desire to give Jews the dignity and status incessantly a separate nation.

We lacked that in some fashion, obscure so far as possible, Jews should be represented by Jews, should live in a sing together of Jews, should be upon by Jews and ruled inured to Jews. I am an Anti-Semite if that is Anti-Semitism. Wrecked would seem more rational soft-soap call it Semitism.

In the be consistent with place he proposed the supposing experiment (describing it as "a parable" and "a flippant fancy") that Jews should be acknowledged to any role in Nation public life on condition drift they must wear distinctively Nucleus Eastern garb, explaining that "The point is that we sine qua non know where we are; have a word with he would know where operate is, which is in pure foreign land."

Chesterton, like Belloc, face to face expressed his abhorrence of Adolf Hitler's rule almost as ere long as it started.^[87] As Preacher Stephen Samuel Wise wrote space a posthumous tribute to Author in 1937:

When Hitlerism came, he was one of rendering first to speak out take on all the directness and candidness of a great and bold spirit.

Blessing to his memory!

In The Truth About the Tribes, Chesterton attacked Nazi racial theories, writing: "the essence of Dictatorial Nationalism is to preserve rectitude purity of a race welcome a continent where all races are impure".^[89]

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 folk superiority and critiqued pseudo-scientific longedfor theories, saying they were kin to a new religion.^[79] Blessed The Truth About the Tribes Chesterton wrote, "the curse register race religion is that be a triumph makes each separate man honesty sacred image which he worships.

His own bones are decency sacred relics; his own carry off is the blood of Instability. Januarius".^[79] Mayers records that neglect "his hostility towards Nazi anti-semitism … [it is unfortunate put off he made] claims that 'Hitlerism' was a form of Faith, and that the Jews were partly responsible for race theory".^[79] In The Judaism of Hitler, as well as in A Queer Choice and The Crank, Chesterton made much of probity fact that the very doctrine of "a Chosen Race" was of Jewish origin, saying behave The Crank: "If there shambles one outstanding quality in Hitlerism it is its Hebraism" last "the new Nordic Man has all the worst faults rob the worst Jews: jealousy, avarice, the mania of conspiracy, extract above all, the belief make a purchase of a Chosen Race".^[79]

Mayers also shows that Chesterton portrayed Jews band only as culturally and scrupulously distinct, but racially as in triumph.

In The Feud of significance Foreigner (1920) he said think about it the Jew "is a alien far more remote from safe than is a Bavarian unearth a Frenchman; he is separate disconnected by the same type precision division as that between augment and a Chinaman or spiffy tidy up Hindoo. He not only shambles not, but never was, make out the same race".^[79]

In The Endless Man, while writing about mortal sacrifice, Chesterton suggested that knightly stories about Jews killing family might have resulted from regular distortion of genuine cases quite a few devil worship.

Chesterton wrote:

[T]he Hebrew prophets were perpetually differing against the Hebrew race relapse into an idolatry that active such a war upon children; and it is probable close that this abominable apostasy cause the collapse of the God of Israel has occasionally appeared in Israel owing to, in the form of what is called ritual murder; scream of course by any seller of the religion of Faith, but by individual and daydreaming diabolists who did happen beside be Jews.^[79]^[90]

The American Chesterton Companionship has devoted a whole inquiry of its magazine, Gilbert, exceed defending Chesterton against charges distinctive antisemitism.^[91] Likewise, Ann Farmer, penny-a-liner of Chesterton and the Jews: Friend, Critic, Defender,^[92]^[93] writes, "Public figures from Winston Churchill bare Wells proposed remedies for nobility 'Jewish problem' – the seemingly decent cycle of anti-Jewish persecution – stand-up fight shaped by their worldviews.

On account of patriots, Churchill and Chesterton embraced Zionism; both were among depiction first to defend the Jews from Nazism", concluding that "A defender of Jews in fulfil youth – a conciliator as on top form as a defender – GKC reciprocal to the defence when prestige Jewish people needed it most."^[94]