Chesterston, Gilbert Keith. (1874 - 1936).

W o r k

- a novelist, poet, playwright, literary and social critic, newspaper columnist, historian, Catholic Christian theologian, debater, and mystery writer

- a down-to-English-earth writer with social prejudices based on a nostalgic vision of a lost, happy, Catholic England

F i c t i o n :

- wrote fantasies of narrative playfulness lacking from the often glum political fiction of the period

- introduced Father Brown: his best known character, the priest-detective of his short-story series

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904):

- a political fantasy set in the future

- an utopian romance of an independent London ruled from an undistinguished inner suburb

- shaped by his anti-centralist, anti-authoritarian, and anti-theoretical prejudices

The Man Who was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908):

- a paradoxical fable set in an anarchic present

- the protagonist: a poet turned an employee of Scotland Yard, reveals a vast conspiracy against civilisation

- the title: the members of the gang named for the days of the week

- reflects a fin-de-siècle decadence: a story of London artists and London anarchists made up of layers of deception and artifice

- draws on tradition x but: moves towards the fragmentation of Modernists

- conclusion: the Christian God coalesces with rampant human individualism

N o n - f i c t i o n :

- the ‘prince of paradox’: wrote whimsical prose with startling formulations

Robert Browning (1903), Charles Dickens (1906), and R. L. Stevenson (1907):

- literary biographies

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1974) and Saint Francis of Assisi (1987):

- religious biographies

P o e t r y :

- little known x but: well reflecting his beliefs and opinions

“Lepanto”:

- perhaps his best poem

“The Rolling English Road”:

- his most familiar poem