G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English writer, who became popular for his brilliant, vigorous, and witty style, despite holding sometimes controversial views. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London and educated at Saint Paul’s School and the Slade School of Art in London. Although originally a liberal in his philosophy, he later became a conservative. In the late 1890s Chesterton formed a lasting friendship with English writer Hilaire Belloc, also a conservative, and the two men established a journal to expound their views. Chesterton became a Roman Catholic in 1922, and many of his works, even those written before his conversion, are defenses of Roman Catholicism and religious orthodoxy in general.

In 1900 Chesterton published his first books, the poetry collections The Wild Knight and Greybeards at Play. His more important nonfiction works include books of literary criticism, such as Robert Browning (1903), Charles Dickens (1906), and George Bernard Shaw (1909); theological studies, such as Orthodoxy (1909), St. Francis of Assisi (1923), and St. Thomas Aquinas (1933); and books of social criticism, such as The Defendant (1901) and What’s Wrong With the World (1910). Today Chesterton is perhaps most famous for his novels The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), a futuristic fantasy, and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), a witty allegory, and for a series of detective stories relating the adventures of Father Brown, a mild-mannered Roman Catholic sleuth.