Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was born in London into a middle-class family. His father, Edward, was a member of the well-known Kensington auctioneer and estate agents business of Chesterton and his mother, Marie-Louise, was of Franco-Scottish ancestry. He did not learn to read until he was over eight and one of his teachers told him, "If we opened your head, we should not find brain but only a lump of white fat." Chesterton studied at University College and the Slade School of Art (1893-96). At the age of sixteen he started a magazine called The Debater.

Around 1893 he had gone through a crisis of skepticism and depression and during this period Chesterton experimented with the Ouija board and grew fascinated with diabolism.- In 1895 Chesterton left University College without a degree and worked for the London publisher Redway, and T. Fisher Unwin (1896-1902). Much of his works were first published in such publications as The Speaker, Daily News, Illustrated London News, Eye Witness, New Witness, and in his own G.K.'s Weekly. Chesterton renewed his Christian faith; also the courtship of his future wife, Frances Blogg, whom he married in 1901, helped him to pull himself out of the spiritual crisis.

In 1900 appeared GREYBEARDS AT PLAY, Chesterton's first collection of poems. ROBERT BROWNING (1903) and CHARLES DICKENS (1906) were literary biographies, THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL (1904) was Chesterton's first novel, a political fantasy, and in THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY (1908) Chesterton depicted fin-de-siècle decadence. The protagonist, Syme, is a poet turned an employee of Scotland Yard, who reveals a vast conspiracy against civilization. The members of the secret anarchist gang are named for days of the week. Sunday is the most mysterious character who tells that since "the beginning of the world, all men have hunted me like a wolf - kings and sages, and poets and law-givers, all the churches, and all the philosophers. But I have never been caught yet." Sunday, the president of the Central Anarchist Coucil gives a simple advice about disguise: "You want a safe disguise, do you? You want a dress which will guarantee you harmless, a dress in which no one would ever look for a bomb? Why then, dress up as an anarchist, you fool! Nobody will ever expect you to do anything dangerous then." Perhaps Chesterton had in mind the 'Bloody Sunday' of 22 January 1905, when the priest and double-agent Gapon, led the crowds to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburgh. A stage adaptation of the story by Mrs Cecil Chesterton and Ralph Neale was produced in 1926.

In 1909 Chesterton moved with his wife to Beaconsfield, a village twenty-five miles west of London, and continued to write, lecture, and travel energetically. Between 1913 and 1914 Chesterton was regular contributor for the Daily Herald. In 1914 he suffered a physical and nervous breakdown. After World War I Chesterton became leader of the Distributist movement and later the President of the Distributist League, promoting the idea that private property should be divided into smallest possible freeholds and then distributed throughout society. In his writings Chesterton also expressed his distrust of world government and evolutionary progress. During the Boer War he took a pro-Boer standpoint. He was very popular radio lecturer, engaging in a series of debates with George Bernard Shaw. His younger brother, Cecil, died in 1918 and Chesterton edited his brother's the New Witness and his own G.K.'s Weekly.

To read books by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, select from the list on the left.