The Everyman Chesterton

by G.K. Chesterton, Ian Ker (Editor)

The first one-volume reader of the best of G. K. Chesterton’s writing in the full range of genres he mastered.

Chesterton was a towering literary figure of the early twentieth century, accomplished and prolific in many literary forms. A forceful proponent of Christianity and a critic of both conservatism and liberalism, he set out to describe nothing less than the spiritual journey of humanity in Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, his most enduring books. He is famous as well for his beloved Father Brown detective stories, his satirical and comic verse, his profoundly witty paradoxes and aphorisms, and his penetrating studies of such figures as Charles Dickens, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Thomas Aquinas. The Everyman Chesterton contains samples of his poems, stories, essays, and biographies, as well as the influential works of religious, political, and social thought in which he championed the common man and for which he is most admired.

Table of Contents:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Hearsay Evidence
The Man with the Golden Key

CHARLES DICKENS
The Dickens Period
The Boyhood of Dickens
The Youth of Dickens
The Pickwick Papers
The Great Popularity
Dickens and America
Dickens and Christmas
The Time of Transition
Later Life and Works
The Great Dickens Characters
On the Alleged Optimism of Dickens
A Note on the Future of Dickens

THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE
The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies
The Great Victorian Novelists
The Great Victorian Poets

ORTHODOXY
Introduction in Defence of Everything Else
The Maniac
The Suicide of Thought
The Ethics of Elfland
The Flag of the World
The Paradoxes of Christianity
The Eternal Revolution
The Romance of Orthodoxy
Authority and the Adventurer

THE EVERLASTING MAN
Introduction: The Plan of This Book
The Riddles of the Gospel
The Strangest Story in the World
The Witness of the Heretics
The Escape from Paganism
The Five Deaths of the Faith
Conclusion: The Summary of This Book

ST THOMAS AQUINAS
On Two Friars
The Aristotelian Revolution
A Meditation on the Manichees
The Approach to Thomism
The Permanent Philosophy
The Sequel to St Thomas

FATHER BROWN STORIES
The Blue Cross
The Queer Feet
The Wrong Shape
The Resurrection of Father Brown
The Miracle of Moon Crescent
The Dagger with Wings
The Doom of the Darnaways
The Song of the Flying Fish
The Red Moon of Meru
The Chief Mourner of Marne
The Scandal of Father Brown
The Quick One
The Blast of the Book
The Green Man
The Crime of the Communist
The Vampire of the Village

POEMS
Wine and Water
Antichrist, or the Reunion of Christendom: An Ode
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
Lepanto
The Secret People
The Rolling English Road
The Donkey

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Theology, Literature, British Literature

952 pages, Hardcover

First published April 5, 2011

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

[Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries are lovely, sentimental favs, but his nonfiction stuff also has a lot of panache

[David Mosley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since some of Chesterton's works, especially the ones featured in this volume, can be hard to come by, I recommend this volume. However, it should be known that several of the books included in this volume are included only in part (particularly The Everlasting Man and Saint Thomas Aquinas).

Nevertheless, this book gave me an excellent opportunity to delve even more deeply into the thought and writing of G. K. Chesterton. If you've never read Chesterton, I highly recommend you do so. He will take the world you think you know and render it strange, nigh unrecognisable, before giving it back to you so you can see it rightly. If you choose to read Chesterton, prepare to have your perception altered.

[Andrew Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This Everyman's Chesterton consists of four main parts. The first one discusses Dickens, his literature and generally the Victorian literature. It is a first class exposition of Dickens' creativity in exposing the inequality of the Victorian society. The essays prove Chesterton's erudition and excellence of his writing style.

Unfortunately, the remaining parts are a bit of disappointment. The second part contains essays about Christianity and St. Thomas Aquinas. Again, Chesterton's erudition makes the contents very challenging to an average reader as it requires much better knowledge of the subject to appreciate it properly.

The third part consists of a series of short stories about an amateur detective, Catholic priest - Father Brown. Unfortunately, I found them a bit simplistic and even boring. In all of those stories, while some strange things happen, Father Brown is the only one can deduce their nature. All this seems a bit silly, as no clues are given how he might have come across his outlandish findings.

I skipped the last part of Chesterton's devoted to his poems. Not my cup of tea.

[Starry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thick, newly published book with a range of selections from Chesterton's work: from his literary criticism of Charles Dickens (this is a timely republishing since 2012 marks Dickens' 200th birthday), to his theological treatises and his Father Brown mysteries.

I came across this book after Chesterton's name kept coming up in unrelated places: several wise religious quotations were attributed to him on website and the church bulletin, and my search for other classic mystery novels I haven't read yet unearthed his name as a great mystery writer.

I have enjoyed all the parts I've read so far (though certainly won't have time to finish it before library due date). The Dickens material was insightful, relating his life to his writing and was especially interesting to me because I once considering Dickens my fave author.

The Father Brown short stories were a pleasure to read. The mysteries were clever, but reading too many is succession is not recommended: they are too similar in content, outcome, and purpose. I admired the pacing and puzzles and how Chesterton used the stories to address spiritual issues in a very readable manner: he is showing that being a Christian doesn't require one to suspend reason and suspect science. I disliked how few stories included female characters and those who did appear were poorly developed characters (though I suppose this is understandable -- the author is a priest! but, still, insight into the human heart applies equally to males and females). The stories are also a bit dated with the stereotypically British mistrust of all things foreign.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid selection from Chesterton's books, but could have used more of his essays (some of his strongest, wittiest, and most profound work) and a LOT more of his poetry, of which there were only a few examples in this book.

[Caleb Sommerville · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took me almost four months to read. It's intimidating and well worth my time.
I'll go by subsection.

Autobiography
Quite possibly one of my favorite introductions to any book: "Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874..." Just glorious wit. The rest of this excerpt was fine if a bit wordy, but that's just Chesterton in a nutshell.

Charles Dickens
This section, while expansive and well over my head, succeeded in piquing my interest to read more Dickens.

Victorian age in literature
I attempted to read this, but ended up skipping most of it simply because I had little to no context and didn't understand any of his points.

Orthodoxy/The Everlasting Man
Truly wonderful theology books. I adored both of them and will probably pick up standalone volumes at some point. Chesterton's brain works in odd ways, and it's lovely to see him unravel and wrestle with Truths.

St Thomas Aquinas
As with the Victorian literature section, I skipped it due to my own ignorance and lack of context.

Father Brown Stories
By far the highlight of this monstrous read. Fresh and witty mysteries with some lovely Truths thrown in. Fantastic stuff.

Poetry
I've never been one for poetry, and this is no exception. I just didn't get it. Oh Well.

[Paul Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's no doubt Chesterton was a man of many (strongly held) opinions as well as having a wide range of interests. Having waded through 12 chapters of discursive musings on Dickens I skipped the religious section and went straight to the Father Brown stories. The brief collection of poems add little save for imparting the knowledge that Chesterton wrote some. I am left with the sense that Chesterton was probably an opinionated bore as well as a prolific writer.

[Michael Baranowski · Rating 1 out of 5]

Such an annoyingly arrogant prig. Though he does write beautifully.

[Wes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great short stories on Father Brown!

[Partha Banerjee]

Pure Wisdom, wit and enchanting prose