Selected Essays

by G.K. Chesterton

These portable, handy sized classics are a great addition to your collection or they make a great gift item. All are hardcover editions in imitation red leather with golden foil stamping. Includes a red ribbon marker.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.

He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.

Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.

Reviews

[Maria Isabel Giraldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creo que ya sí estoy leyendo Chesterton en serio después de mucho coquetearle. Este libro me lo regaló un amigo (lo mandó de México y casi se pierde en el camino como era de esperarse) hace varios años. Y por fin le llegó su momento. Y ¡qué momento! Primer libro de 2023.
Este libro es una selección de ensayos (obvio) que son más bien columnas de opinión o escritos cortos que Chesterton escribió a lo largo de su vida en distintos escenarios, periódicos y libros. Oscilan entre todos los temas, con una diversidad impresionante: la infinitud de cosas que guardamos en los bolsillos, críticas varias a la modernidad (qué pensaría de nuestra modernidad?), análisis sobre este o aquel poeta o filósofo, relatos de pequeños instantes que le abrieron puertas a lo trascendente, varios sobre la identidad inglesa. Lo que más me fascinó es cómo toma un asunto cotidiano, como las viudas, la Torre de Belfry o los trenes, y lo convierte en una reflexión profunda, divertida y radical, casi siempre crítica, siempre esperanzadora.
Chesterton me dejó pensativa, confrontada y, sobre todo, antojada de seguir leyéndolo. Y de algún día ser tan culta que entienda todas sus referencias.

[Brydan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many of the essays are - in typical Chestertonian fashion - timeless and very insightful.

Most (likely all) of the selection would have been published in other compilations: I recall some from Tremendous Trifles.

However, the occasional essay sprinkled throughout dealt more with contemporary issues than the timeless sort of topics we were reading it for got in the way from time to time.

As a broader cross section of his writing though, it has been a great introduction to his writing style on a wide variety of topics. Great for light or humourous reading, with some deeper insights mixed into at least every other passage.

[Gille Liath · Rating 4 out of 5]

More evidence that Chesterton was a great thinker but perhaps not a great writer. His style is just not a happy one (though it strains so hard to give an impression of good humour): not smooth, full bodied and satisfying like Lamb, Hazlitt, Hunt, Stevenson. Actually, their styles are such that, until you stop to consider the question, you don't really notice them at all; and that - when combined, of course, with enjoyment of the results - is the true mark of mastery in any art. Chesterton's style, though, is always jumping up and down trying to catch your attention. It avoids pomposity but is far too self-consciously rhetorical. Not only that, some of these pieces, short though they are, would have benefitted from being shorter; presumably written for periodicals, and required to take up a certain amount of space, some of them are padded with substantial preludes that are pretty much irrelevant to the main point.

And yet, how much deeper and more original a thinker Chesterton was than those other people. They lacked neither intelligence, humour nor seriousness, but they had no great vision of life. They are boon companions, but not prophets. Chesterton saw for himself, as they did not, that life is not simply a business about which a writer opines cynically or whimsically according his temperament, in order to help the reader pass an hour and make the best of a bad job. It is a serious matter - though it need not be a solemn one; it has an overarching meaning, and it is essentially a religious meaning; and beneath this there is nothing so small and insignificant that it does not also have its own value, whether positive or negative. In a word, he rediscovered the medieval attitude, that everything matters; and, and more than that, he was often able to see just why a particular thing matters.

Take Chesterton's piece on Free Verse. I have never seen this disease on the body of poetry diagnosed - well, at all, let alone so perceptively. Against all the cultural currents of his time (and ours), he sees that it is a misguided and self-defeating desire for liberty, where it does not belong, that has given rise to the style; and that in a case like this form, stricture and perfection are actually the liberating things:

'We really find [freedom] in something more continuous and recurrent, and not in something more fragmentary and crude. Freedom is fullness, especially fullness of life; and a full vessel is more rounded and complete than an empty one, and not less so.'

To read those sentences is in itself like the breath of freedom, of liberation from the pursuit of novelty for its own sake that is the besetting curse of modern culture. I think they could stand as a summary of Chesterton's whole attitude to life. He was a prophet in a velvet cloak and a broad-brimmed hat. It's possible that that vocation simply doesn't go with great prose.

[David Batten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clarity and wit on every page. Reading Chesterton feels like going on an adventure of words, both because you never know what he'll talk about next, and because you get the sense his words are on the front edge of his thinking. It's great fun, and I even laughed out loud at points. But mostly it left me wishing I could get lunch with him every Tuesday and hear what he is thinking about this week.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot about Chesterton and his character through these essays. He is extremely witty and to the point. This group of essays had insights on everything from marriage to what can be found in one's pocket. A few of them had arguments framed around people or places I am not knowledgable of, so much of the humor was lost on me. A fun reference none the less

[Marcos Junior · Rating 4 out of 5]

One way to get a classical education, to understand the west culture, is reading G. K. Chesterton. He really talks about everything, always with a interesting point of view, even if you don't agree with him. If you wan't to know what a medieval mind would think about our issues, that's the author you are searching for. Selected Essays give you a lot of examples of a creative mind searching to understand the world and using on single weapon: the common sense.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

My edition is called 'Selected Essays by G.K. Chesterton chosen by Dorothy Collins.'

[Vincent Cavanagh · Rating 4 out of 5]

My edition was published in 1953 with an introduction by John Guest. One of the more memorable essays was entitled 'A Piece of Chalk'.