G. K. Chesterton

British essayist and critic

• Born: May 29, 1874
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: June 14, 1936
• Place of death: Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England

Chesterton was an intellectual giant of the early twentieth century and a voluminous and artful writer of essays, poetry, biographies, short stories, books, and philosophical commentaries. A realist and religious apologist during an age of skepticism, his common-sense philosophy and whimsical style influenced many important intellectual figures. As a prominent public intellectual he spoke and debated widely, including with such friendly adversaries as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells.

Early Life

G. K. Chesterton was the son of Edward Chesterton, a businessman of middling means, and Marie-Louise Chesterton. The young Chesterton, oddly, did not learn to read until the age of eight, unusual for someone who would later be so prolific a writer. His early schooling was at St. Paul’s, and he later attended Slade Art School for studies in illustration. He also enrolled at University College of London, taking literature courses before dropping out in 1896 to take a job with a London publisher of spiritualist literature.

Though nominally Anglican, formal religious training was not emphasized by Chesterton’s parents. In his autobiography Chesterton admitted that his happy childhood was followed by an adolescence and young adulthood of intellectual and spiritual crisis. Art school encouraged him to doubt the existence of mind, but his contact with atheists who granted only the existence of matter prodded him to conclude that both mind and matter existed and that human beings comprise both a spiritual and a physical nature. He spent a lifetime observing human foibles and flaws, and gently satirizing them, while he devised a personal philosophy during the later 1890’s that he ultimately discovered was essentially the same as Christianity. This discovery led him to practice Anglicanism and then convert to Roman Catholicism in 1922.

During his work in the publishing arena, he began to pursue freelance writing as an art and literary critic. In 1901 he married Frances Blogg, who was instrumental in helping him find spiritual and religious stability. His work as a journalist focused his considerable intellectual talent. During his journalism career he wrote more than four thousand essays, but this was to be only a small part of his much broader intellectual legacy as a literary giant. There was nothing small about Chesterton’s physical stature either. He was six feet four inches in height and weighed about three hundred pounds. Coupled with his quick wit and irrepressible personality, he cut a large figure in life.

Life’s Work

Chesterton began a long and storied career as a journalist in 1902 as a weekly columnist for the Daily News. In 1905 he became a weekly columnist also for the Illustrated London News, a professional relationship that endured for thirty years. In 1925 he founded his own publication, G. K.’s Weekly. He was a master wordsmith and a polished expert at the art of the essay.

Above all, Chesterton was a man of ideas. This is reflected in his own autobiography, which is short on dates and personal experience and long on the ideas and philosophies that his agile and capacious mind sought to understand. There is hardly an aspect of human endeavor that Chesterton did not seek to plumb in his literary, political, and philosophical musings. His first love was literature, though. Although his first novel, The Man Who Was Thursday , was not published until 1907, Chesterton had already published numerous short stories and began dabbling with the detective genre, which he would later master in his Father Brown stories. In his detective stories, Chesterton explored the human soul and spirit rather than dwell on the empirical, scientific, and logical analysis so characteristic of other mystery writers.

Chesterton also was a fine biographer and critic of literature. His biography Charles Dickens (1903) is widely regarded as a masterpiece, and his biographies of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thomas Aquinas also have been praised. Philosopher Étienne Gilson regarded Chesterton’s St. Thomas Aquinas: “The Dumb Ox” (1933) the “best book ever written on St. Thomas,” so deep was its insight into the scholastic theologian’s system of thought.

Religion and theology also interested Chesterton, who wrote widely and often on the subject. His embrace of Christianity is described in his theological masterpiece Orthodoxy (1908). The Everlasting Man (1925), most likely his most important book, combines theology with history in a critique of H. G. Wells’s skeptical and materialist Outline of History (1920). Chesterton’s apologetic writings were numerous and influential. C. S. Lewis credited his reading of Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man as contributing to his own conversion from atheism to Christianity. Lewis’s book The Catholic Church and Conversion (1927) is a deeply personal reflection and self-analysis of his conversion.

Chesterton’s interests went beyond literature, history, philosophy, and theology. He was an astute observer of politics and economics, and he cannot be easily categorized as either conservative or liberal. With Hilaire Belloc, a friend and contemporary, he was a stolid defender of “distributism,” which advocates an economic system of productive-property holdings by the general population, as a sensible alternative to socialism and capitalism, both of which Chesterton considered inadequate responses to ultimate human needs. He was a defender of private property but an opponent of corporate greed. Chesterton’s prodigious literary output crossed disciplines, and he juggled many different projects at the same time, which indicated a high degree of intellectual suppleness and breadth of ken. Even his Autobiography (1936), which was completed shortly before his death, was a work about the ideas that animated his spirit and excited his intellect.

At a time when the globalization of news and information was in its infancy, Chesterton could be described as one of the world’s first public intellectuals. He was a frequent lecturer, master of ceremonies, and debater. He excelled in these personal and public appearances and delighted audiences whether in Europe, the Middle East, or North America. His trip to the United States led to his essay collection What I Saw in America (1922). Among Chesterton’s well-known sparring partners in debate were George Bernard Shaw, Wells, Bertrand Russell, and Clarence Darrow. Chesterton’s wit and charm enabled him to disagree forcefully with his adversaries without making enemies, and he captivated audiences with the substance of his argument, his eloquence, and his playful style. He was a master at the art of civility in debate.

Significance

Chesterton was one of the most influential and well-known intellectuals in his own day, but his influence persists in literature and Christian apologetics into the twenty-first century. Author of about one hundred books in a range of disciplines, Chesterton left his imprint on history, philosophy, theology, social sciences, and literature. The American television series The Father Dowling Mysteries was patterned on Chesterton’s popular Father Brown mysteries. His apologetic writings led many prominent intellectuals to consider the claims of Christianity.

Chesterton Societies exist in a number of countries, including, most prominently, England, Canada, and the United States. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, there were two dozen Chesterton Societies in the United States alone. Most of Chesterton’s writings remain in print nearly a century after they were written. Ignatius Press published updates of his collected works.

Scholars in England and the United States explored the ways in which Chesterton’s thought remains relevant to contemporary concerns. The American Chesterton Society (ACS) publishes Gilbert Magazine, and the Chesterton Society of England publishes the G. K. Chesterton Quarterly. Dale Ahlquist, president of ACS, produced the television series The Apostle of Common Sense, which aired on the Eternal Word Television Network and explored various themes and issues examined in Chesterton’s wide corpus of writing.

Chesterton was a serious observer of the human drama and a critic of modern secularism. His life’s work demonstrated keen awareness of soul craft, spiritual realities, and human weakness. His prophetic warnings against the idolatry of nationalism and socialism and the terror they were capable of visiting upon humanity seemed borne out by the events of World War II, the Holocaust, and interminable persecutions wrought by communist and totalitarian governments. However, his greatest influence persisted in his many and varied writings, which call people to recognize their own dignity among their weaknesses and to appreciate the mystery and beauty of life in an age perplexed by demons of doubt and despair.

Bibliography

Ahlquist, Dale. The Apostle of Common Sense. San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 2003. Ahlquist offers commentary on Chesterton’s religious and theological writings, and he presents a justification for Chesterton’s ongoing relevance to those seeking religious meaning.

Boyd, Ian. The Novels of G. K. Chesterton: A Study in Art and Propaganda. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1975. A thoughtful critique of Chesterton’s novels that attempts to discern the elements of propaganda from those of artistry.

Canovan, Margaret. G. K. Chesterton: Radical Populist. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. A somewhat dated but useful critique of Chesterton’s political, economic, and social thought.

Chesterton, G. K. Autobiography. San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 2006. Chesterton on Chesterton is a uniquely entertaining way to enter into the mind of a genius who could not just talk about himself but at every turn address the larger world in wonder.

Pearce, Joseph. Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton. San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 1996. The most detailed and comprehensive biography of Chesterton available.

Peters, Thomas C. The Christian Imagination: G. K. Chesterton on the Arts. San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 2000. A short, breezy account of Chesterton’s contributions to literature and the arts.

Wills, Garry. Chesterton: Man and Mask. New York: Doubleday, 2001. A reissue of one of the author’s earliest works. Thoughtful critique of Chesterton’s work that also examines critics and advocates of Chesterton as a man and a thinker.