View source for G. K. Chesterton

{{Short description|English author and Christian apologist (1874–1936)}}
{{Distinguish|A. K. Chesterton}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2024}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2016}}
{{Infobox writer
| name             = G. K. Chesterton
| honorific_suffix = {{postnominals|KC*SG|country=GBR|size=100%}}
| image            = Gilbert Chesterton.jpg
| birth_name       = Gilbert Keith Chesterton
| birth_date       = {{Birth date|df=yes|1874|5|29}}
| birth_place      = [[Kensington]], London, England
| death_date       = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1936|6|14|1874|5|29}}
| death_place      = [[Beaconsfield]], Buckinghamshire, England
| resting_place    = Roman Catholic Cemetery, Beaconsfield
| occupation       = {{cslist|Journalist|novelist|essayist|poet}}
| education        = [[University College London]]
| period           = 1900–1936
| genre            = Essays, [[Fantasy literature|fantasy]], [[Christian apologetics]], [[Catholic apologetics]], [[Mystery fiction|mystery]], [[poetry]]
| movement         = [[Catholic literary revival]]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ker |first=Ian |title=The Catholic Revival in English Literature (1845–1961): Newman, Hopkins, Belloc, Chesterton, Greene, Waugh |year=2003 |publisher=University of Notre Dame Press}}</ref>
| notableworks     = {{ubl|''[[The Napoleon of Notting Hill]]''|''[[The Man Who Was Thursday]]''|''[[Orthodoxy (book)|Orthodoxy]]''|[[Father Brown|Father Brown stories]]|''[[The Everlasting Man]]''}}
| spouse           = {{marriage|[[Frances Blogg]]|1901}}
| relatives        = {{ubl|[[Cecil Chesterton]] (brother)|[[A. K. Chesterton]] (first cousin, once removed)}}
| signature        = GK Chesterson signature.svg
| caption          = Chesterton in 1909
}}
{{Catholic philosophy}}

'''Gilbert Keith Chesterton''' {{postnominals|KC*SG|country=GBR}} (29 May 1874&nbsp;– 14 June 1936) was an English author, philosopher, [[Christian apologetics|Christian apologist]], [[poet]], journalist and magazine editor, and [[Literary criticism|literary]] and [[art critic]].<ref>{{Citation |title=Obituary |date=17 June 1936 |work=[[Variety Obituaries|Variety]]}}</ref> Chesterton's wit, [[Paradox|paradoxical]] style, and defence of tradition made him a dominant figure in early 20th-century literature. 

Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective [[Father Brown]],<ref name="Father Brown on Chesterton">{{Cite book |last=O'Connor |first=John |url=http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/Father_Brown_on_Chesterton.pdf |title=Father Brown on Chesterton |date=1937 |publisher=Frederick Muller Ltd. |access-date=7 April 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130403054646/http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/Father_Brown_on_Chesterton.pdf |archive-date=3 April 2013 |url-status=live}}</ref> and wrote on [[apologetics]], such as his works ''[[Orthodoxy (book)|Orthodoxy]]'' and ''[[The Everlasting Man]]''.<ref name="Time">{{Citation |title=Orthodoxologist |date=11 October 1943 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,774701-3,00.html |magazine=Time |access-date=24 October 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091120195520/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,774701-3,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=20 November 2009}}</ref>{{Sfn|Douglas | 1974 | ps =: "Like his friend [[Ronald Knox]] he was both entertainer and Christian apologist. The world never fails to appreciate the combination when it is well done; even [[evangelicals]] sometimes give the impression of bestowing a waiver on deviations if a man is enough of a genius."}} Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an [[Orthodoxy|orthodox]] Christian and came to identify this position more and more with [[Catholic Church|Catholicism]], eventually converting from [[High church|high church Anglicanism]]. Biographers have identified him as a successor to such [[Victorian literature|Victorian]] authors as [[Matthew Arnold]], [[Thomas Carlyle]], [[John Henry Newman]] and [[John Ruskin]].{{sfn|Ker|2011|p=485}}

He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Douglas |first=J. D. |date=24 May 1974 |title=G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton, the Eccentric Prince of Paradox |url=http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/augustweb-only/8-27-52.0.html?paging=off#bmb=1 |url-status=live |journal=Christianity Today |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141101102137/http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/augustweb-only/8-27-52.0.html?paging=off#bmb=1 |archive-date=1 November 2014 |access-date=8 July 2014}}</ref> Of his writing style, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' observes: "Whenever possible, Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."<ref name="Time" /> His writings were an influence on [[Jorge Luis Borges]], who compared his work with that of [[Edgar Allan Poe]].<ref>{{cite book|language=hr|title=Čovjek koji je previše znao|publisher=Partenon|location=Zlatar|year=2002|page=134|last=Chesterton|first=Gilbert Keith|translator=Darko Mitin|isbn=953-6840-03-0}}</ref>

Initially educated in art, Chesterton became a prolific author, producing around 80 books, 200 short stories, 4,000 essays, and notable works such as ''[[The Man Who Was Thursday]]'', and the Father Brown detective stories. Raised in a loosely [[Unitarian Universalism|Unitarian]] family, he became agnostic in his early adulthood, but later spent much of his life as a member of the [[Church of England]] through the influence of [[Frances Blogg|his wife]]. He converted to Catholicism in 1922 largely under the influence of [[Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton|his longtime partnership]] with [[Hilaire Belloc]], who shaped much of his writing. A charismatic public intellectual, he debated figures like [[George Bernard Shaw]] and [[H. G. Wells]], opposed [[imperialism]] and [[eugenics]], and promoted [[distributism]]—a "third way" between [[capitalism]] and [[socialism]]. He died in 1936, leaving a vast and enduring legacy, with his possible [[Saint|sainthood]] still periodically discussed.

== Biography ==
=== Early life ===

[[File:G.K. Chesterton at the age of 17.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Chesterton at age 17]]

Chesterton was born in [[Campden Hill]] in [[Kensington]], London, on 29 May 1874. His father was Edward Chesterton, an estate agent, and his mother was Marie Louise, {{née}} Grosjean, of Swiss-French origin.<ref>{{cite ODNB | url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-32392 | isbn=978-0-19-861412-8 | doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/32392 | year=2004 | last1=Bergonzi | first1=Bernard | title=Chesterton, Gilbert Keith &#91;G. K. C.&#93; (1874–1936), writer }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Simkin |first=John |title=G. K. Chesterton |url=http://spartacus-educational.com/Jchesterton.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150204194659/http://spartacus-educational.com/Jchesterton.htm |archive-date=4 February 2015 |access-date=4 February 2015 |website=Spartacus Educational}}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last=Haushalter |first=Walter M. |title=Gilbert Keith Chesterton |url=https://archive.org/stream/universitymagazi11mcgiuoft#page/232/mode/2up |work=The University Magazine |volume=XI |page=236 |year=1912 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> Chesterton was baptised at the age of one month into the [[Church of England]],{{sfn|Ker|2011|p=1}} though his family were irregularly practising [[Unitarianism|Unitarians]].{{sfn|Ker|2011|p=13}} According to his autobiography, as a young man he became fascinated with the [[occult]] and, along with his brother [[Cecil Chesterton|Cecil]], experimented with [[Ouija boards]].{{Sfn|Chesterton|1936|loc=[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301201h.html#ch15 Chapter IV]}} He was educated at [[St Paul's School, London|St Paul's School]], then attended the [[Slade School of Art]] to become an illustrator. The Slade is a department of [[University College London]], where Chesterton also took classes in literature, but he did not complete a degree in either subject. He married [[Frances Blogg]] in 1901; the marriage lasted the rest of his life. Chesterton credited Frances with leading him back to [[Anglicanism]], though he later considered Anglicanism to be a "pale imitation". He entered in full communion with the [[Catholic Church]] in 1922.{{sfn|Ker|2011|p=265–266}}  The couple were unable to have children.<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://chestertonaustralia.com/downloads/conferences/chesterton_conference_papers_2018.pdf |title=Chesterton and the child – A Collection of Papers presented at a conference of the Australian Chesterton Society on October 20, 2018, at Campion College Australia, Sydney |date=2018 |publisher=Australian Chesterton Society |location=Sydney, Australia |page=41 |access-date=13 November 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190801202931/http://chestertonaustralia.com/downloads/conferences/chesterton_conference_papers_2018.pdf |archive-date=1 August 2019 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Ker|2011|p=162–163}}

A friend from schooldays was [[Edmund Clerihew Bentley]], inventor of the [[clerihew]], a whimsical four-line biographical poem. Chesterton wrote clerihews and illustrated his friend's first published collection of poetry, ''Biography for Beginners'' (1905), which popularised the clerihew form. He became godfather to Bentley's son [[Nicolas Bentley|Nicolas]] and opened his novel ''The Man Who Was Thursday'' with a poem written to Bentley.{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}

===Career===
In September 1895, Chesterton began working for the London publisher George Redway, where he remained for just over a year.{{sfn|Ker|2011|p=41}} In October 1896, he moved to the publishing house [[T. Fisher Unwin]],{{sfn|Ker|2011|p=41}} where he remained until 1902. During this period he undertook his first journalistic work as a freelance art and literary critic. In 1902, ''[[The Daily News (UK)|The Daily News]]'' gave him a weekly opinion column, followed in 1905 by a weekly column in ''[[The Illustrated London News]]'', for which he continued to write for the next 30 years.

Early on Chesterton showed a great interest in and talent for art. He had planned to become an artist, and his writing shows a vision that clothed abstract ideas in concrete and memorable images. [[Father Brown]] is perpetually correcting the incorrect vision of the bewildered folk at the scene of the crime and wandering off at the end with the criminal to exercise his priestly role of recognition, repentance and reconciliation. For example, in the story "''The Flying Stars''", Father Brown entreats the character [[Flambeau (character)|Flambeau]] to give up his life of crime: "There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don't fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I've known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime."<ref>{{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=G. K. |title=The Innocence of Father Brown |page=118 |year=1911 |chapter=The Flying Stars |chapter-url=https://archive.org/stream/fatherbrown00chesuoft#page/96/mode/2up |place=London |publisher=Cassell & Company, Ltd.}}</ref>

[[File:Caricature of Chesterton, by Beerbohm.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Caricature]] by [[Max Beerbohm]]]]

Chesterton loved to debate, often engaging in friendly public disputes with such men as [[George Bernard Shaw]],<ref>{{Citation |title=Do We agree? A Debate between G. K. Chesterton and Bernard Shaw, with Hilaire Belloc in the Chair |year=1928 |place=London |publisher=C. Palmer}}</ref> [[H. G. Wells]], [[Bertrand Russell]] and [[Clarence Darrow]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Clarence Darrow debate |date=30 April 2012 |url=http://www.chesterton.org/clarence-darrow-debate/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140521214716/http://www.chesterton.org/clarence-darrow-debate/ |archive-date=21 May 2014 |access-date=21 May 2014 |publisher=American Chesterton Society}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton January, 1915 |url=http://darrow.law.umn.edu/photo.php?pid=1062 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140521214130/http://darrow.law.umn.edu/photo.php?pid=1062 |archive-date=21 May 2014 |access-date=21 May 2014 |website=Clarence Darrow digital collection |publisher=[[University of Minnesota Law School]]}}</ref> According to his autobiography, he and Shaw played cowboys in a silent film that was never released.{{sfn|Chesterton|1936|pages=231–235}} On 7 January 1914 Chesterton (along with his brother Cecil and future sister-in-law [[Ada Elizabeth Chesterton|Ada]]) took part in the mock-trial of John Jasper for the murder of [[The Mystery of Edwin Drood|Edwin Drood]]. Chesterton was Judge, and Shaw played the role of foreman of the jury.<ref>Programme, ''The Trial of John Jasper for the Murder of Edwin Drood'', at King's Hall, Covent Garden, 7 January 1914. (A copy in a private collection, annotated by the original owner.)</ref> That autumn, Chesterton was struck with a serious illness from which he barely recovered, bedridden for months and unconscious for a significant portion of it.<ref>{{Cite ODNB|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/32392|title=Chesterton, Gilbert Keith [G. K. C.]}}</ref>

During the First World War, Chesterton was editing ''[[New Witness]]'' writing editorials and publishing letters from writers and thinkers, such as Thomas Maynard—<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Maynard |first=Thomas |date=22 March 1917 |title=Conspiracy Case |journal=New Witness |pages=578}}</ref> English poet and historian of the Catholic Church whose thinking was influenced by Chesterton's (1908) ''[[Orthodoxy (book)|Orthodoxy]]''—and [[Hilaire Belloc]]. In 1917, issues of ''New Witness''<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Chesterton |first1=G.K. |last2=Coleman |last3=Belloc |first3=Hilaire |last4=Prynne |date=1917 |title=Editorials and Letters |journal=New Witness |issue=March, April, May}}</ref> shed light on these writers' moral concerns about the way the war was being fought on the home front, by commentary on "the 'Gordon Scandal'", the undercover agent alias "[[Alex Gordon (police agent)|Alex Gordon]]". This scandal was the refusal of the Attorney-General [[F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead|F.E. Smith]] to produce 'Gordon', the 'vanishing spy', for examination in court but on whose 'evidence' three defendants to conspiracy to murder ([[David Lloyd George]] and [[Arthur Henderson]]) were convicted and imprisoned (''R v [[Alice Wheeldon]] & Ors'', 1917).

Chesterton was a large man, standing {{convert|6|ft|4|in|m}} tall and weighing around {{convert|20|st|6|lb|kg lb}}. His girth gave rise to an anecdote during the First World War, when a lady in London asked why he was not "out at the [[Western Front (World War I)|Front]]"; he replied, "If you go round to the side, you will see that I am."<ref>{{Citation |last=Wilson |first=A. N. |title=Hilaire Belloc |page=219 |year=1984 |place=London |publisher=Hamish Hamilton}}</ref> On another occasion he remarked to Shaw, "To look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England."  Shaw retorted, "To look at you, anyone would think you had caused it."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cornelius |first=Judson K. |title=Literary Humour |publisher=St Paul's Books |isbn=978-81-7108-374-9 |location=Mumbai |page=144}}</ref> [[P. G. Wodehouse]] once described a very loud crash as "a sound like G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton falling onto a sheet of tin".<ref>{{Citation |last=Wodehouse |first=P.G. |title=The World of Mr. Mulliner |page=172 |year=1972 |publisher=Barrie and Jenkins |author-link=P. G. Wodehouse}}</ref> Chesterton usually wore a cape and a crumpled hat, with a [[swordstick]] in hand and a cigar hanging out of his mouth. He had a tendency to forget where he was supposed to be going and miss the train that was supposed to take him there. It is reported that on several occasions he sent a telegram to his wife Frances from an incorrect location, writing such things as "Am in [[Market Harborough]]. Where ought I to be?" to which she would reply, "Home".{{Sfn|Ward | 1944|loc=chapter XV}} Chesterton told this story but omitting his wife's alleged reply, in his autobiography.{{sfn|Chesterton|1936|loc=Chapter 16}}

In 1931, the [[BBC]] invited Chesterton to give a series of radio talks. He accepted, tentatively at first. He was allowed (and encouraged) to improvise on the scripts. This allowed his talks to maintain an intimate character, as did the decision to allow his wife and secretary to sit with him during his broadcasts.{{sfn|Ker|2011|p=675}} The talks were very popular. A BBC official remarked, after Chesterton's death, that "in another year or so, he would have become the dominating voice from Broadcasting House."<ref name="catholicauthors">{{Cite web |title=Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) |url=http://www.catholicauthors.com/chesterton.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110511001442/http://www.catholicauthors.com/chesterton.html |archive-date=11 May 2011 |access-date=23 March 2011 |website=Catholic Authors}}</ref> Chesterton was nominated for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] in 1935.<ref>[https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=1760 Nomination archive – Gilbert K Chesterton] nobelprize.org</ref>

Chesterton was part of the [[Detection Club]], a society of British mystery authors founded by [[Anthony Berkeley Cox|Anthony Berkeley]] in 1928. He was elected as the first president and served from 1930 to 1936 until he was succeeded by [[Edmund Clerihew Bentley|E. C. Bentley]].<ref>"Detection Club, The". ''Gadetection / Detection Club, The'', gadetection.pbworks.com/w/page/7930445/Detection%20Club%2C%20The.</ref> Chesterton was one of the dominating figures of the London literary scene in the early 20th century.

=== Death ===
[[File:PPXI.jpeg|thumb|Telegram sent by Cardinal [[Eugenio Pacelli]] (the future Pius XII) on behalf of [[Pope Pius XI]] to the people of England following the death of Chesterton]]

Chesterton died of [[congestive heart failure]] on 14 June 1936, 16 days after his 62nd birthday, at his home in [[Beaconsfield]], Buckinghamshire. His last words were a greeting of good morning spoken to his wife Frances. The sermon at Chesterton's [[Requiem Mass]] in [[Westminster Cathedral]], London, was delivered by [[Ronald Knox]] on 27 June 1936. Knox said, "All of this generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton."<ref>{{Citation |last=Lauer |first=Quentin |title=G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: Philosopher Without Portfolio |page=25 |year=1991 |place=New York City, NY |publisher=Fordham University Press}}</ref> He is buried in Beaconsfield in the Catholic Cemetery. Chesterton's estate was [[probate]]d at £28,389, {{inflation|UK|28389|1936|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}.<ref>{{Citation |last=Barker |first=Dudley |title=G. K. Chesterton: A Biography |page=287 |year=1973 |place=New York |publisher=Stein and Day}}</ref>

Near the end of Chesterton's life, [[Pope Pius XI]] invested him as Knight Commander with Star of the Papal [[Order of St. Gregory the Great]] (KC*SG).<ref name=catholicauthors/> The Chesterton Society has proposed that he be [[beatification|beatified]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gaspari |first=Antonio |date=14 July 2009 |title='Blessed' G. K. Chesterton?: Interview on Possible Beatification of English Author |url=http://www.zenit.org/article-26454?l=english |url-status=dead |journal=Zenit: The World Seen from Rome |location=Rome |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100615225435/http://zenit.org/article-26454?l=english |archive-date=15 June 2010 |access-date=18 October 2010 }}</ref>

==Writing==
Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays (mostly newspaper columns), and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, and Catholic theologian<ref>Bridges, Horace J. (1914). [https://archive.org/stream/ethicaladdresses21ameruoft#page/20/mode/2up "G. K. Chesterton as Theologian"]. In: ''Ethical Addresses''. Philadelphia: The American Ethical Union, pp. 21–44.</ref><ref>Caldecott, Stratford (1999). "Was G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton a Theologian?", ''The Chesterton Review''. (Rep. by [http://catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0499.html ''CERC: Catholic Education Research Center''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130713051810/http://catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0499.html |date=13 July 2013 }}.)</ref> and [[apologist]], debater, and mystery writer. He was a columnist for the ''Daily News'', ''[[The Illustrated London News]]'', and his own paper, ''[[G. K.'s Weekly]]''; he also wrote articles for the ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'', including the entry on [[Charles Dickens]] and part of the entry on Humour in the 14th edition (1929). His best-known character is the priest-detective [[Father Brown]],<ref name="Father Brown on Chesterton" /> who appears only in short stories, while ''[[The Man Who Was Thursday]]'' is arguably his best-known novel. He was a convinced Christian long before he was received into the Catholic Church, and Christian themes and symbolism appear in much of his writing. In the United States, his writings on [[distributism]] were popularised through ''[[The American Review (literary journal)|The American Review]]'', published by [[Seward Collins]] in New York. {{Citation needed|date=April 2025}} Chesterton's writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour. He employed [[paradox]], while making serious comments on the world, government, politics, economics, philosophy, theology and many other topics.<ref>Douglas, J. D. [http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/augustweb-only/8-27-52.0.html "G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton, the Eccentric Prince of Paradox"], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160420091039/http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/augustweb-only/8-27-52.0.html |date=20 April 2016 }} ''[[Christianity Today]]'', 8 January 2001.</ref><ref>Gray, Robert. [http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/paradox-was-his-doxy/ "Paradox Was His Doxy"], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130610150138/http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/paradox-was-his-doxy/ |date=10 June 2013 }} ''The American Conservative'', 23 March 2009.</ref>

Of his nonfiction, ''Charles Dickens: A Critical Study'' (1906) has received some of the broadest-based praise. According to [[Ian Ker]] (''The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845–1961'', 2003), "In Chesterton's eyes Dickens belongs to [[Merry England|Merry]], not [[Puritan]], England"; Ker treats Chesterton's thought in chapter 4 of that book as largely growing out of his true appreciation of Dickens, a somewhat shop-soiled property in the view of other literary opinions of the time. The biography was largely responsible for creating a popular revival for Dickens's work as well as a serious reconsideration of Dickens by scholars.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ahlquist |first=Dale |title=Common Sense 101: Lessons from G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton |publisher=Ignatius Press |year=2006 |page=286}}</ref>


[[T. S. Eliot]] sums up his work as follows:

{{Blockquote|He was importantly and consistently on the side of the angels. Behind the [[Samuel Johnson|Johnsonian]] fancy dress, so reassuring to the British public, he concealed the most serious and revolutionary designs—concealing them by exposure{{nbsp}}... Chesterton's social and economic ideas{{nbsp}}... were fundamentally Christian and Catholic. He did more, I think, than any man of his time—and was able to do more than anyone else, because of his particular background, development and abilities as a public performer—to maintain the existence of the important minority in the modern world. He leaves behind a permanent claim upon our loyalty, to see that the work that he did in his time is continued in ours.<ref name="Gilbert Chesterton by T. S. Eliot" />}}

Eliot comments further: "His poetry was first-rate journalistic balladry, and I do not suppose that he took it more seriously than it deserved. He reached a high imaginative level with ''[[The Napoleon of Notting Hill]]'', and higher with ''[[The Man Who Was Thursday]]'', romances in which he turned the [[Robert Louis Stevenson|Stevensonian]] fantasy to more serious purpose. His book on [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]] seems to me the best essay on that author that has ever been written. Some of his essays can be read again and again; though of his essay-writing as a whole, one can only say that it is remarkable to have maintained such a high average with so large an output."<ref name="Gilbert Chesterton by T. S. Eliot">{{Cite journal |last=Eliot |first=T. S. |date=20 June 1936 |title=Gilbert Chesterton by T. S. Eliot |url=https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/72405/spread/1 |url-status=live |journal=The Tablet |volume=167 |issue=5015 |page=785 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801031249/https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/72405/spread/1 |archive-date=1 August 2020 |access-date=19 April 2020}}</ref>

In 2022, a three-volume bibliography of Chesterton was published, listing 9,000 contributions he made to newspapers, magazines, and journals, as well as 200 books and 3,000 articles about him.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hasnes |first=Geir |title=G. K. Chesterton. A Bibliography |publisher=Classica forlag |year=2022 |isbn=978-82-7610-013-6 |location=Kongsberg, Norway}}</ref>

==Contemporaries==

==="Chesterbelloc"===
{{main|Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton}}
[[File:GK Chesterton and H Belloc.png|thumb|A caricature Chesterton (left) and Belloc with a poem about their unity and inseparability ([[Thomas Derrick (artist)|Thomas Derrick]], {{circa|1935}})|alt=A caricature of two obese men in suits writing with quills in the same book holding each others hands and sitting on a huge pillow; a poem is written in flowery handwriting beneath]]
Chesterton is often associated with his close friend, poet and essayist Hilaire Belloc.<ref>Mccarthy, John P. (1982). "The Historical Vision of Chesterbelloc", ''Modern Age'', Vol. XXVI, No. 2, pp.&nbsp;175–182.</ref><ref>McInerny, Ralph. [http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/rmcinerny_chesterbelloc_aug06.asp "Chesterbelloc"], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130429052646/http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/rmcinerny_chesterbelloc_aug06.asp |date=29 April 2013 }} ''Catholic Dossier'', May/June 1998.</ref> George Bernard Shaw coined the name "Chesterbelloc"<ref>Shaw, George Bernard (1918). [https://dl.lib.brown.edu/pdfs/1140813740390342.pdf "Belloc and Chesterton"], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060911084540/http://dl.lib.brown.edu/pdfs/1140813740390342.pdf |date=11 September 2006 }} ''The New Age'', South Africa Vol. II, No. 16, pp. 309–311.</ref> for their partnership,<ref>Lynd, Robert (1919). [https://archive.org/stream/cu31924026941678#page/n27/mode/2up "Mr. G. K. Chesterton and Mr. Hilaire Belloc"]. In: ''Old and New Masters''. London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., pp. 25–41.</ref> and this stuck. Though they were very different men, they shared many beliefs;<ref>McInerny, Ralph. [http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2008/the-chesterbelloc-thing.html "The Chesterbelloc Thing"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121229110253/http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2008/the-chesterbelloc-thing.html |date=29 December 2012 }}, ''The Catholic Thing'', 30 September 2008.</ref> in 1922, Chesterton joined Belloc in the Catholic faith, and both voiced criticisms of capitalism and socialism.<ref>Wells, H. G. (1908). [https://dl.lib.brown.edu/pdfs/1140813732859166.pdf "About Chesterton and Belloc"], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060911090920/http://dl.lib.brown.edu/pdfs/1140813732859166.pdf |date=11 September 2006 }} ''The New Age'', South Africa Vol. II, No. 11, pp. 209–210 (Rep. in ''Social Forces in England and America'', 1914).</ref> They instead espoused a third way: distributism.<ref>"Belloc and the Distributists", ''The American Review'', November 1933.</ref> ''[[G. K.'s Weekly|G.&nbsp;K.'s Weekly]]'', which occupied much of Chesterton's energy in the last 15 years of his life, was the successor to Belloc's ''[[New Witness]]'', taken over from Cecil Chesterton, who died in World War I.

In his book ''On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters'', Belloc wrote that "Everything he wrote upon any one of the great English literary names was of the first quality.  He summed up any one pen (that of [[Jane Austen]], for instance) in exact sentences; sometimes in a single sentence, after a fashion which no one else has approached.  He stood quite by himself in this department. He understood the very minds (to take the two most famous names) of [[William Makepeace Thackeray|Thackeray]] and of [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]]. He understood and presented [[George Meredith|Meredith]]. He understood the supremacy in [[John Milton|Milton]]. He understood [[Alexander Pope|Pope]]. He understood the great [[John Dryden|Dryden]]. He was not swamped as nearly all his contemporaries were by [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]], wherein they drown as in a vast sea – for that is what Shakespeare is. Gilbert Chesterton continued to understand the youngest and latest comers as he understood the forefathers in our great corpus of English verse and prose."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Belloc |first=Hilaire |url=http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/Belloc-essay.txt |title=On the Place of Chesterton in English Letters |date=1940 |publisher=Sheed & Ward |location=London |access-date=19 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200217124223/http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/Belloc-essay.txt |archive-date=17 February 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Wilde===
In his book ''[[Heretics (book)|Heretics]]'', Chesterton said this of [[Oscar Wilde]]: "The same lesson [of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker] was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the {{langr|la|[[carpe diem]]}} religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw."{{Sfn|Chesterton|1905|loc=[https://web.archive.org/web/20170115201317/http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/heretics/ch7.html chapter 7]}} More briefly, and with a closer approximation to Wilde's own style, he wrote in his 1908 book ''[[Orthodoxy (book)|Orthodoxy]]'' concerning the necessity of making symbolic sacrifices for the gift of creation: "Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde."

===Shaw===
[[File:Shaw, Belloc e Chesterton.jpg|thumb|[[George Bernard Shaw]], [[Hilaire Belloc]], and G. K. Chesterton]]
Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw were famous friends and enjoyed their arguments and discussions. Although rarely in agreement, they each maintained good will toward, and respect for, the other.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/chesterton-gallery-of-beloved-enemies|title=Misguided Superman Fan: George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)|website=Christian History Institute}}</ref> In his writing, Chesterton expressed himself very plainly on where they differed and why. In ''Heretics'' he writes of Shaw:

{{blockquote|After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby.{{Sfn|Chesterton|1905|loc=[https://web.archive.org/web/20170115201317/http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/heretics/ch4.html chapter 4]}}}}

==Views==
===Advocacy of Catholicism===
Chesterton's views, in contrast to Shaw and others, became increasingly focused towards the Church. In ''Orthodoxy'' he writes: "The worship of will is the negation of will{{nbsp}}... If Mr Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, 'Will something', that is tantamount to saying, 'I do not mind what you will', and that is tantamount to saying, 'I have no will in the matter.' You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that it is particular."{{Sfn|Chesterton|1905|loc=[https://web.archive.org/web/20170115201317/http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/heretics/ch20.html chapter 20]}}

Chesterton's ''[[The Everlasting Man]]'' contributed to [[C. S. Lewis]]'s conversion to Christianity. In a letter to [[Sheldon Vanauken]] (14 December 1950),<ref>Vanauken, S., ''[[A Severe Mercy]]'' (New York: [[Harper (publisher)#Harper & Row (1962–1990)|Harper & Row]], 1977), p. 90.</ref> Lewis calls the book "the best popular apologetic I know",<ref>[http://www.discovery.org/cslewis/articles/writingspblcdmn/letters.php ''Letter to Sheldon Vanauken''], {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130303112207/http://www.discovery.org/cslewis/articles/writingspblcdmn/letters.php |date=3 March 2013 }} 14 December 1950.</ref> and to Rhonda Bodle he wrote (31 December 1947)<ref>{{Citation |last=Lewis |first=Clive Staples |title=The Collected Letters |volume=2 |page=823}}</ref> "the [very] best popular defence of the full Christian position I know is G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton's ''The Everlasting Man''". The book was cited in a list of 10 books that "most shaped his vocational attitude and philosophy of life".<ref>{{Citation |title=The Christian Century |date=6 June 1962}}</ref>

Chesterton's hymn "O God of Earth and Altar" was printed in ''[[Christian Social Union (Church of England)#Development|The Commonwealth]]'' and was included in ''[[The English Hymnal]]'' in 1906.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Routley |first=Erik |title=An English-speaking Hymnal Guide |publisher=GIA publications |year=2005 |page=129}}</ref> Several lines of the hymn appear in the beginning of the song "Revelations" by the British heavy metal band [[Iron Maiden]] on their 1983 album ''[[Piece of Mind]]''.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture |publisher=Greenwood |year=2013 |editor-last=Edmondson |editor-first=Jacqueline |location=Santa Barbara, CA |page=39}}</ref> Lead singer [[Bruce Dickinson]] in an interview stated "I have a fondness for hymns. I love some of the ritual, the beautiful words, ''[[And did those feet in ancient time|Jerusalem]]'' and there was another one, with words by G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton ''O God of Earth and Altar'' – very fire and brimstone: 'Bow down and hear our cry'. I used that for an Iron Maiden song, "Revelations". In my strange and clumsy way I was trying to say look it's all the same stuff."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bruce Dickinson: Faith And Music (1999) | date=25 July 2012 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4fYfLcKKPw#t=521 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170218174832/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4fYfLcKKPw#t=521 |archive-date=18 February 2017 |access-date=11 September 2017 |via=YouTube}}</ref>

[[Étienne Gilson]] praised Chesterton's [[Saint Thomas Aquinas (Chesterton)|book on Thomas Aquinas]]: "I consider it as being, without possible comparison, the best book ever written on Saint Thomas{{nbsp}}... the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas Aquinas, and who, perhaps, have themselves published two or three volumes on the subject, cannot fail to perceive that the so-called 'wit' of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame."<ref>{{Citation |last=Gilson |first=Etienne |title=Guide to Thomas Aquinas |pages=6–7 |year=1987 |editor-last=Pieper |editor-first=Josef |contribution=Letter to Chesterton's editor |publisher=University of Notre Dame Press}}</ref>

Archbishop [[Fulton J. Sheen]], the author of 70 books, identified Chesterton as the stylist who had the greatest impact on his own writing, stating in his autobiography ''Treasure in Clay'', "the greatest influence in writing was G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton who never used a useless word, who saw the value of a paradox, and avoided what was trite."<ref>Sheen, Fulton J. (2008). ''Treasure in Clay''. New York: Image Books/Doubleday, p. 79.</ref> Chesterton wrote the introduction to Sheen's book ''God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy; A Critical Study in the Light of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sheen |first=Fulton J. |title=God and Intelligence |publisher=IVE Press}}</ref>

===Common sense===
Chesterton has been called "The Apostle of Common Sense".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ahlquist |first1=Dale |title=G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense |date=2003 |publisher=Ignatius Press |location=San Francisco}}</ref>  He was critical of the thinkers and popular philosophers of the day, who though very clever, were saying things that he considered nonsensical. This is illustrated again in ''Orthodoxy'': "Thus when Mr H. G. Wells says (as he did somewhere), 'All chairs are quite different', he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them 'all chairs'."{{Sfn|Chesterton|1908b|loc=[https://web.archive.org/web/20170115201317/http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/orthodoxy/ch3.html chapter 3]}}

===Conservatism===
Although Chesterton was an early member of the [[Fabian Society]], he resigned at the time of the [[Second Boer War]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Holroyd |first=Michael |url=https://archive.org/details/bernardshaw00holr/page/214 |title=Bernard Shaw Vol 2 |date=1989 |publisher=Chatto & Windus |isbn=978-0701133504 |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/bernardshaw00holr/page/214 214]}}</ref> He is often identified as a [[Traditionalist conservatism|traditionalist conservative]]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fawcett |first=Edmund |title=Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition |date=2020 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-17410-5 |location=Princeton |page=252}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Kirk |first=Russell |title=Russell Kirk's Concise Guide to Conservatism |date=2019 |publisher=Regnery Publishing |isbn=978-1-62157-878-9 |location=Washington |page=4}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Lee |first=Michael J. |title=The Conservative Canon and Its Uses |journal=Rhetoric and Public Affairs |publisher=Michigan State University Press |volume=15 |issue=1 |year=2012 |issn=1094-8392 |jstor=41955606 |pages=1–39 |doi=10.1353/rap.2012.0008 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/41955606 |access-date=9 March 2025  |url-access=subscription}}</ref>{{rp|39}}&nbsp;due to his staunch support of tradition, expressed in ''Orthodoxy'' and other works with [[Edmund Burke|Burkean]]&nbsp;quotes such as the following:

{{blockquote|Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |last=Hamilton |first=Andy |title=Conservatism |date=2020 |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/conservatism/ |encyclopedia=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N.|access-date=2023-11-26 |publisher=The Metaphysics Research Lab|publication-place=Stanford University|issn=1095-5054}}</ref>}}

Chesterton has been considered among the United Kingdom's anti-imperialist conservative wing, contrasted with his intellectual rivals in Shaw and Wells.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Deneen |first=Patrick J. |title=Conservatism in America? A Response to Sidorsky |journal=Nomos |publisher=[[American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy]] |volume=56 |year=2016 |issn=0078-0979 |jstor=26387881 |pages=140–159 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26387881 |access-date=9 March 2025 |url-access=subscription}}</ref>{{rp|158}} Chesterton's association with conservatism has expanded beyond British politics; Japanese conservative intellectuals, such as {{ill|lt=Hidetsugu Yagi|Hidetsugu Yagi (legal scholar)|ja|八木秀次 (法学者)}}, have often referred to Chesterton's appeal to tradition as the "democracy of the dead".<ref>{{cite book |last=Winkler |first=Christian |title=Conservative Moments: Reading Conservative Texts |editor-last=Garnett |editor-first=Mark |editor-link=Mark Garnett |chapter=Conservatism in Japan: Dealing with discontinuity |pages=85–90 |series=Textual Moments in the History of Political Thought |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |publication-place=London |date=2018 |isbn=978-1-350-00155-8 |quote=It is hardly surprising then that Japanese conservative intellectuals frequently refer to G. [K.] Chesterton's 'democracy of the dead'. |url=https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/58809/1/9781350001558.pdf}} {{open access}}</ref>{{rp|89}} However, Chesterton did not equate conservatism with complacency, arguing that cultural conservatives had to be politically radical.<ref>{{cite book |last=Stapleton |first=Julia |title=Christianity, Patriotism, and Nationhood |publisher=Lexington Books |publication-place=Lanham (Md.) |date=2009 |isbn=978-0-7391-2613-4 |page=147}}</ref>

===Liberalism===
In spite of his association with tradition and conservatism, Chesterton called himself "the last liberal".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ahlquist |first1=Dale |author1-link=Dale Ahlquist |title=Remembering G. K. Chesterton |journal=[[Chronicles (magazine)|Chronicles]] |date=March 2021 |url=https://chroniclesmagazine.org/remembering-the-right/remembering-g-k-chesterton/ |access-date=26 November 2023}}</ref> He was a supporter of the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal Party]] until he severed ties in 1928 following the death of former Liberal Prime Minister [[H. H. Asquith]], although his attachment had already gradually weakened over the decades.<ref name=davenport>{{cite journal |last1=Davenport |first1=John B. |date=2017 |title=The Distributists and the Liberal Party |url=https://liberalhistory.org.uk/journal-article/the-distributists-and-the-liberal-party/ |journal=Journal of Liberal History |issue=93 |publisher=[[Liberal Democrat History Group]] |pages=26–34 |access-date=28 April 2025}}</ref> In addition the ''Daily News'', for which Chesterton had been a columnist between 1903 and 1913, was aligned with the Liberals.<ref name=dn>{{cite journal |last1=Stapleton |first1=Julia |year=2013|title=Chesterton at the Daily News |url=https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1444320/chesterton-at-the-daily-news |journal=[[The Chesterton Review]] |volume=39 |issue=1–2|pages=49–62 |doi=10.5840/chesterton2013391/210  |access-date=28 April 2025}}</ref>

Chesterton's increasing coolness towards the Liberal Party was a response to the rise of [[New liberalism (ideology)|New Liberalism]] in the early 20th century, which differed from his own vision of liberalism in several respects: it was secular, rather than being rooted in Christianity like the party's previously predominant creed of [[Gladstonian liberalism]], and advocated a [[Liberal welfare reforms|collectivist approach to social reform]] at odds with Chesterton's concern about what he saw as an increasingly interventionist and [[technocratic]] state challenging both the primacy of the family in social organisation and democracy as a political ideal.<ref name=dn /><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stapleton |first1=Julia|date=2015 |title=The Battle of Plutocracy: G. K. Chesterton, Wells, Masterman and the Future of Democracy |url=https://thewellsian.awh.durham.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/Wellsian/article/view/430 |journal=[[The Wellsian: The Journal of the H. G. Wells Society]] |volume=38 |pages=57–69 |access-date=28 April 2025}}</ref><ref name=davenport />

Despite this critique of the development of left-liberalism in this period, Chesterton also criticised the ''[[laissez-faire]]'' approach of [[Manchester Liberalism]] which had been influential among Liberals in the late 19th century, arguing that this had led to the development of [[monopolies]] and [[plutocracy]] rather than the competition classical theorists had predicted, as well as the exploitation of workers for profit.<ref name=davenport />

In addition to Chesterton, other distributists including Belloc were also involved with the Liberals before the First World War. They shared much common ground in terms of their policy agenda with the broader party during this time, including devolution of power to local government, [[Suffrage|franchise reform]], replication of the Irish [[Land Acts (Ireland)|Wyndham Land Act]] in Britain, supporting trade unions and a degree of social reform by central government, whilst opposing socialism.<ref name=davenport />

Chesterton opposed the Conservative [[Education Act 1902]], which provided for public funding of Church schools, on the grounds that religious freedom was best served by keeping religion out of education. However, he disassociated himself from the campaign against it led by [[John Clifford (minister)|John Clifford]], whose invoking of the Act's provisions as resulting in "Rome on the [[Rates (tax)|rates]]" was judged by Chesterton to be bigotry appealing to [[straw man]] arguments.<ref name=dn /> The Chestertons and Belloc supported the Liberal leadership on the passage of [[David Lloyd George]]'s [[People's Budget]] and the weakening of the power of the House of Lords through the [[Parliament Act 1911]] in response to its resistance to the budget, but were critical of their timidity in pushing for [[Irish Home Rule movement|Irish Home Rule]].<ref name=davenport />

Following the war, the position of the New Liberals had strengthened, and the distributists came to believe that the party's positions were closer to [[social democracy]] than liberalism. They also differed from most Liberals by advocating for home rule for all of Ireland, rather than [[Partition of Ireland|partition]]. More generally they developed a policy agenda distinct from any of the main three parties during this time, including promoting [[craft guilds]] and the nuclear family, introducing [[primary election]]s and [[referendum]]s, [[antitrust]] action, tax reform to favour small businesses, and transparency regarding [[Political funding in the United Kingdom|party funding]] and the [[Crown Honours Lists|Honours Lists]].<ref name=davenport />

===On war===
Chesterton first emerged as a journalist just after the turn of the 20th century. His great, and very lonely, opposition to the [[Second Boer War]], set him very much apart from most of the rest of the British press.  Chesterton was a [[Little Englander]], opposed to [[imperialism]], British or otherwise. Chesterton thought that Great Britain betrayed her own principles in the Boer Wars.

In vivid contrast to his opposition to the Boer Wars, Chesterton vigorously defended and encouraged the Allies in [[World War I]]. "The war was in Chesterton's eyes a crusade, and he was certain that England was right to fight as she had been wrong in fighting the Boers."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ffinch |first1=Michael |title=G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: A Biography |date=1986 |publisher=Harper and Row |location=New York |isbn=0-06-252576-X |pages=228–29}}</ref> Chesterton saw the roots of the war in Prussian militarism. He was deeply disturbed by Prussia's unprovoked invasion and occupation of neutral Belgium and by [[Atrocity propaganda|reports of shocking atrocities]] the [[Imperial German Army]] was allegedly committing in Belgium. Over the course of the War, Chesterton wrote hundreds of essays defending it, attacking pacifism, and exhorting the public to persevere until victory. Some of these essays were collected in the 1916 work, ''The Barbarism of Berlin''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Chesterton |first1=Gilbert Keith |title=The Barbarism of Berlin |date=1914 |publisher=Cassell and Company |location=London}}</ref>

One of Chesterton's most successful works in support of the War was his 1915 tongue-in-cheek ''The Crimes of England''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Chesterton |first1=Gilbert Keith |title=The Crimes of England |date=1915 |publisher=C. Palmer & Hayward |location=London}}</ref>  The work is ironic, supposedly apologizing and trying to help a fictitious Prussian professor named Whirlwind make the case for Prussia in WWI, while actually attacking Prussia throughout. Part of the book's humorous impact is the conceit that Professor Whirlwind never realizes how his supposed benefactor is undermining Prussia at every turn. Chesterton "blames" England for historically building up Prussia against Austria, and for its pacifism, especially among wealthy British Quaker political donors, who prevented Britain from standing up to past Prussian aggression.

===Accusations of antisemitism===
[[File:G. K. Chesterton at work.jpg|thumb|Chesterton in his office]]

Chesterton faced accusations of [[antisemitism]] during his lifetime, saying in his 1920 book ''[[The New Jerusalem (Chesterton book)|The New Jerusalem]]'' that it was something "for which my friends and I were for a long period rebuked and even reviled".<ref>Chesterton, G. K. (1920) ''[[The New Jerusalem (Chesterton book)|The New Jerusalem]]'', [[Hodder and Stoughton]], chapter 13.</ref> Despite his protestations to the contrary, the accusation continues to be repeated.<ref>{{Citation |title=Last orders |date=9 April 2005 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/09/britishidentity.society |work=The Guardian |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060827153802/http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1455054,00.html |access-date=2 July 2006 |archive-date=27 August 2006 |url-status=live}}</ref> An early supporter of [[Alfred Dreyfus|Captain Dreyfus]], by 1906 he had turned into an [[Dreyfus affair|anti-Dreyfusard]].<ref>Chesterton, Gilbert. ''G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton to the Editor''. The Nation, 18 March 1911.</ref> From the early 20th century, his fictional work included caricatures of Jews, stereotyping them as greedy, cowardly, disloyal and communists.<ref name="Mayers85-7" /> [[Martin Gardner]] suggests that ''Four Faultless Felons'' was allowed to go out of print in the United States because of the "anti-Semitism which mars so many pages."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gardner |first1=Martin |author1-link=Martin Gardner |title=Four Faultless Felons |date=1989 |publisher=[[Dover Publications]] |chapter=Introduction}}</ref>

The [[Marconi scandal]] of 1912–1913 brought issues of anti-Semitism into the political mainstream. Senior ministers in the Liberal government had secretly profited from advance knowledge of deals regarding wireless telegraphy, and critics regarded it as relevant that some of the key players were Jewish.<ref name="Frances Donaldson 2011 51">{{Cite book |last=Donaldson |first=Frances |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_JKMamWMSbAC&pg=PT51 |title=The Marconi Scandal |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |year=2011 |isbn=978-1448205547 |page=51 |access-date=24 October 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801230903/https://books.google.com/books?id=_JKMamWMSbAC&pg=PT51 |archive-date=1 August 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref> According to historian Todd Endelman, who identified Chesterton as among the most vocal critics, "The Jew-baiting at the time of the Boer War and the Marconi scandal was linked to a broader protest, mounted in the main by the Radical wing of the Liberal Party, against the growing visibility of successful businessmen in national life and their challenge to what were seen as traditional English values."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Endelman |first=Todd M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SMOQkrUtqkwC&pg=PA155 |title=The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000 |year=2002 |isbn=9780520227194 |page=155 |publisher=University of California Press |access-date=30 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801232133/https://books.google.com/books?id=SMOQkrUtqkwC&pg=PA155 |archive-date=1 August 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref>

In a 1917 work, titled ''A Short History of England'', Chesterton considers the royal decree of 1290 by which Edward I [[Edict of Expulsion|expelled Jews from England]], a policy that remained in place until 1655. Chesterton writes that popular perception of Jewish moneylenders could well have led Edward I's subjects to regard him as a "tender father of his people" for "breaking the rule by which the rulers had hitherto fostered their bankers' wealth". He felt that Jews, "a sensitive and highly civilized people" who "were the capitalists of the age, the men with wealth banked ready for use", might legitimately complain that "Christian kings and nobles, and even Christian popes and bishops, used for Christian purposes (such as the Crusades and the cathedrals) the money that could only be accumulated in such mountains by a usury they inconsistently denounced as unchristian; and then, when worse times came, gave up the Jew to the fury of the poor".<ref>{{Citation |last=Julius |first=Anthony |title=Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England |page=422 |year=2010 |publisher=Oxford University Press |author-link=Anthony Julius |title-link=Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England}}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=G. K. |title=A Short History of England |pages=108–109 |year=1917 |publisher=Chatto and Windus}}</ref>

In ''The New Jerusalem,'' Chesterton dedicated a chapter to his views on the [[Jewish question]]: the sense that Jews were a distinct people without a homeland of their own, living as foreigners in countries where they were always a minority.{{Sfn|Chesterton|1920|loc=[http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/New_Jerusalem.txt Chapter 13]}} He wrote that in the past, his position:

{{blockquote|was always called Anti-Semitism; but it was always much more true to call it Zionism.{{nbsp}}... my friends and I had in some general sense a policy in the matter; and it was in substance the desire to give Jews the dignity and status of a separate nation. We desired that in some fashion, and so far as possible, Jews should be represented by Jews, should live in a society of Jews, should be judged by Jews and ruled by Jews. I am an Anti-Semite if that is Anti-Semitism. It would seem more rational to call it Semitism.{{Sfn|Chesterton|1920|loc=[https://web.archive.org/web/20170115201317/http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/New_Jerusalem.txt Chapter 13]}}}}

In the same place he proposed the thought experiment (describing it as "a parable" and "a flippant fancy") that Jews should be admitted to any role in English public life on condition that they must wear distinctively Middle Eastern garb, explaining that "The point is that we should know where we are; and he would know where he is, which is in a foreign land."{{Sfn|Chesterton|1920|loc=[https://web.archive.org/web/20170115201317/http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/New_Jerusalem.txt Chapter 13]}}

Chesterton, like Belloc, openly expressed his abhorrence of [[Adolf Hitler]]'s rule almost as soon as it started.<ref name="Pearce2005">{{Cite book |last=Pearce |first=Joseph |title=Literary Giants, Literary Catholics |publisher=Ignatius Press |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-58617-077-6 |location=San Francisco |page=95 |author-link=Joseph Pearce}}</ref> As Rabbi [[Stephen Samuel Wise]] wrote in a posthumous tribute to Chesterton in 1937:

{{blockquote|When Hitlerism came, he was one of the first to speak out with all the directness and frankness of a great and unabashed spirit. Blessing to his memory!{{Sfn|Ward|1944|loc=[https://archive.org/stream/gilbertkeithches001579mbp#page/n301/mode/2up p. 265]}}}}

In ''The Truth About the Tribes,'' Chesterton attacked [[Nazi racial theories]], writing: "the essence of Nazi Nationalism is to preserve the purity of a race in a continent where all races are impure".<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=XsWrlo7P-5cC&lpg=PA593 ''The Collected Works of G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801224645/https://books.google.com/books?id=XsWrlo7P-5cC&lpg=PA593 |date=1 August 2020 }}, Volume 5, Ignatius Press, 1987, page 593</ref>

The historian Simon Mayers points out that Chesterton wrote in works such as ''The Crank'', ''The Heresy of Race'', and ''The Barbarian as Bore'' against the concept of racial superiority and critiqued pseudo-scientific race theories, saying they were akin to a new religion.<ref name="Mayers85-7" /> In ''The Truth About the Tribes'' Chesterton wrote, "the curse of race religion is that it makes each separate man the sacred image which he worships. His own bones are the sacred relics; his own blood is the [[Januarius#Blood|blood of St. Januarius]]".<ref name="Mayers85-7">{{Cite book |last=Mayers |first=Simon |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pbmWBAAAQBAJ&q=Chesterton%E2%80%99s%20Jews%3A%20Stereotypes%20and%20Caricatures%20in%20the%20Literature%20and%20Journalism%20of%20G.K.%20Chesterton&pg=PA85 |title=Chesterton's Jews: Stereotypes and Caricatures in the Literature and Journalism of G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton |year=2013 |isbn=9781490392462 |pages=85–87 |publisher=Simon Mayers |access-date=4 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210529050436/https://books.google.com/books?id=pbmWBAAAQBAJ&q=Chesterton%E2%80%99s+Jews%3A+Stereotypes+and+Caricatures+in+the+Literature+and+Journalism+of+G.K.+Chesterton&pg=PA85 |archive-date=29 May 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> Mayers records that despite "his hostility towards Nazi antisemitism … [it is unfortunate that he made] claims that 'Hitlerism' was a form of Judaism, and that the Jews were partly responsible for race theory".<ref name="Mayers85-7" /> In ''The Judaism of Hitler'', as well as in ''A Queer Choice'' and ''The Crank'', Chesterton made much of the fact that the very notion of "a Chosen Race" was of Jewish origin, saying in ''The Crank'': "If there is one outstanding quality in Hitlerism it is its Hebraism" and "the new Nordic Man has all the worst faults of the worst Jews: jealousy, greed, the mania of conspiracy, and above all, the belief in a Chosen Race".<ref name="Mayers85-7" />

Mayers also shows that Chesterton portrayed Jews not only as culturally and religiously distinct, but racially as well. In ''The Feud of the Foreigner'' (1920) he said that the Jew "is a foreigner far more remote from us than is a Bavarian from a Frenchman; he is divided by the same type of division as that between us and a Chinaman or a Hindoo. He not only is not, but never was, of the same race".<ref name="Mayers85-7" />

In ''The Everlasting Man'', while writing about [[human sacrifice]], Chesterton suggested that medieval stories about [[Blood libel|Jews killing children]] might have resulted from a distortion of genuine cases of devil worship. Chesterton wrote:

{{blockquote|[T]he Hebrew prophets were perpetually protesting against the Hebrew race relapsing into an idolatry that involved such a war upon children; and it is probable enough that this abominable apostasy from the God of Israel has occasionally appeared in Israel since, in the form of what is called ritual murder; not of course by any representative of the religion of Judaism, but by individual and irresponsible diabolists who did happen to be Jews.<ref name="Mayers85-7" /><ref name="Everlasting">{{Cite book |last=Chesterton |first=G. K. |title=The Everlasting Man |publisher=Dover publications |year=2007 |location=Mineola, NY |page=117}}</ref>}}

The [[Dale Ahlquist#Gilbert: The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society|American Chesterton Society]] has devoted a whole issue of its magazine, ''Gilbert'', to defending Chesterton against charges of antisemitism.<ref>[http://www.chesterton.org/was-chesterton-antisemitic/ "Was G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton Anti-Semitic?"], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140429110816/http://www.chesterton.org/was-chesterton-antisemitic/ |date=29 April 2014 }} by Dale Ahlquist.</ref> Likewise, Ann Farmer, author of ''Chesterton and the Jews: Friend, Critic, Defender'',<ref>Ann Farmer, ''Chesterton and the Jews: Friend, Critic, Defender'' (Angelico Press, 2015)</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Ahlquist |first=Dale |title=Defending the Defender of the Jews |url=https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2015/07/27/defending-the-defender-of-the-jews/ |url-status=dead |website=www.catholicworldreport.com |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20210410180424/https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2015/07/27/defending-the-defender-of-the-jews/ |archivedate=10 April 2021}}</ref> writes, "Public figures from [[Winston Churchill]] to [[H. G. Wells|Wells]] proposed remedies for the '[[Jewish problem]]'&nbsp;– the seemingly endless cycle of anti-Jewish persecution&nbsp;– all shaped by their worldviews. As patriots, Churchill and Chesterton embraced Zionism; both were among the first to defend the Jews from Nazism", concluding that "A defender of Jews in his youth&nbsp;– a conciliator as well as a defender&nbsp;– GKC returned to the defence when the Jewish people needed it most."<ref>{{Cite web |date=28 August 2019 |title=The debate: Was Chesterton an anti-Semite? |url=https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-debate-was-chesterton-an-anti-semite/ |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801013420/https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-debate-was-chesterton-an-anti-semite/ |archivedate=1 August 2020}}</ref>

===Opposition to eugenics===
{{Human enhancement sidebar}}

In ''Eugenics and Other Evils'', Chesterton attacked [[eugenics]] as Parliament was moving towards passage of the [[Mental Deficiency Act 1913]]. Some backing the ideas of eugenics called for the government to sterilise people deemed "mentally defective"; this view did not gain popularity but the idea of segregating them from the rest of society and thereby preventing them from reproducing did gain traction. These ideas disgusted Chesterton who wrote, "It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged that the aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children."<ref name=Eugenics/> He condemned the proposed wording for such measures as being so vague as to apply to anyone, including "Every tramp who is sulk, every labourer who is shy, every rustic who is eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions as were designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the situation; and that is the point{{nbsp}}... we are already under the Eugenist State; and nothing remains to us but rebellion."<ref name="Eugenics">{{Cite book |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=Eugenics and Other Evils |publisher=Cassell and Company |year=1922 |location=London, UK}}</ref> He derided such ideas as founded on nonsense, "as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one's fellow citizens as a kind of chemical experiment".<ref name=Eugenics/> Chesterton mocked the idea that poverty was a result of bad breeding: "[it is a] strange new disposition to regard the poor as a race; as if they were a colony of Japs or Chinese coolies{{nbsp}}... The poor are not a race or even a type. It is senseless to talk about breeding them; for they are not a breed. They are, in cold fact, what Dickens describes: 'a dustbin of individual accidents,' of damaged dignity, and often of damaged gentility."<ref name=Eugenics/><ref>[http://www.secondspring.co.uk/articles/sparkes.htm "The Enemy of Eugenics"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170323214803/http://www.secondspring.co.uk/articles/sparkes.htm |date=23 March 2017 }}, by Russell Sparkes.</ref>

===Chesterton's fence===
"Chesterton's fence" is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. The quotation is from Chesterton's 1929 book, ''The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic'', in the chapter, "The Drift from Domesticity":

{{blockquote|In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chesterton |first=G. K. |date=1946 |orig-year=1929 |chapter=The Drift from Domesticity |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.475818/page/n35/mode/2up |title=The Thing<!-- The subtitle is omitted in this edition. --> |url=https://archive.org/details/thingwhyiamcatho0000gkch/page/n7/mode/2up |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106171443/https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000041581954;view=1up;seq=39 |archive-date=6 November 2018 |edition=Reprint |location=London |publisher=Sheed & Ward |page=29 |oclc=977629776 |access-date=29 May 2024}}</ref>}}

===Distributism===
{{Unreferenced section|date=April 2025}}
[[File:Three acres and a cow.JPG|thumb|upright|Self-portrait based on the [[Distributism|distributist]] slogan "[[Three acres and a cow]]"]]

Inspired by [[Leo XIII|Leo XIII's]] encyclical ''[[Rerum novarum]]'', Chesterton's brother [[Cecil Chesterton|Cecil]] and his friend, [[Hilaire Belloc]] were instrumental in developing the economic philosophy of [[distributism]], a word Belloc coined. Gilbert embraced their views and, particularly after Cecil's death in World War I, became one of the foremost distributists and the newspaper whose care he inherited from Cecil, which ultimately came to be named ''[[G.&nbsp;K.'s Weekly]]'', became its most consistent advocate.  Distributism stands as a third way, against both unrestrained capitalism, and socialism, advocating a wide distribution of both property and political power.

===Scottish and Irish nationalism===
Chesterton was not an opponent of nationalism in general and gave a degree of support to [[Scottish nationalism]] and [[Irish nationalism]]. He endorsed [[Cunninghame Graham]] and [[Compton Mackenzie]] for the post of [[Lord Rector of Glasgow University]] in 1928 and 1931 respectively and praised Scottish Catholics as "patriots" in contrast to Anglophile Protestants such as [[John Knox]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brand |first=Jack |title=The National movement in Scotland |date=1978 |publisher=Routledge and K. Paul |isbn=978-0-7100-8866-6 |location=London Henley Boston}}</ref> Chesterton was also a supporter of the [[Irish Home Rule movement]] and maintained friendships with members of the [[Irish Parliamentary Party]]. This was in part due to his belief that [[Irish Catholics]] had a naturally distributist outlook on property ownership.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Davenport |first=John |date=2014 |title=G. K. Chesterton: Nationalist Ireland's English Apologist |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24347821 |journal=Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review |volume=103 |issue=410 |pages=178–192 |jstor=24347821 |issn=0039-3495}}</ref>

==Legacy==
James Parker, in ''[[The Atlantic]]'', gave a modern appraisal:

{{blockquote|In his vastness and mobility, Chesterton continues to elude definition: He was a Catholic convert and an oracular man of letters, a pneumatic cultural presence, an aphorist with the production rate of a pulp novelist. Poetry, criticism, fiction, biography, columns, public debate...Chesterton was a journalist; he was a metaphysician. He was a reactionary; he was a radical. He was a modernist, acutely alive to the rupture in consciousness that produced Eliot's "The Hollow Men"; he was an anti-modernist...a parochial Englishman and a post-Victorian gasbag; he was a mystic wedded to eternity. All of these cheerfully contradictory things are true...for the final, resolving fact that he was a genius. Touched once by the live wire of his thought, you don't forget it{{nbsp}}... His prose ... [is] supremely entertaining, the stately outlines of an older, heavier rhetoric punctually convulsed by what he once called (in reference to the Book of Job) "earthquake irony". He fulminates wittily; he cracks jokes like thunder. His message, a steady illumination beaming and clanging through every lens and facet of his creativity, was really very straightforward: get on your knees, modern man, and praise God.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Parker |first=James |date=April 2015 |title=A Most Unlikely Saint: The case for canonizing G. K. Chesterton, the bombastic man of letters and paradoxical militant for God |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/a-most-unlikely-saint/386243/ |url-status=live |journal=The Atlantic |issue=15 April Issue |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200517144242/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/a-most-unlikely-saint/386243/ |archive-date=17 May 2020 |access-date=19 April 2020}}</ref>}}

===Possible sainthood===
The [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Northampton|Bishop Emeritus of Northampton]], [[Peter Doyle (bishop)|Peter Doyle]], in 2012 had opened a preliminary investigation into possibly launching a cause for [[beatification]] and then [[canonization]] (for possible sainthood), but eventually decided not to open the cause. Doyle cited Chesterton's lack of a cult of local devotion, his lack of a "pattern of spirituality" and charges that he was antisemitic.<ref>{{Cite web |last=CNA |title=Chesterton sainthood cause will not advance, Bishop Doyle says |url=https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/41943/chesterton-sainthood-cause-will-not-advance-bishop-doyle-says |access-date=2025-09-03 |website=Catholic News Agency |language=en}}</ref>  In 2023 the next Bishop of Northampton, [[David Oakley (bishop)|David Oakley]], agreed to preach at a Mass during a Chesterton pilgrimage in England (the route goes through London and Beaconsfield, which are both connected to his life). If the cause had been actually opened at the diocesan level (the Vatican must also give approval, that nothing stands in the way – the "''[[nihil obstat]]''"), then he could be given the title "[[Servant of God]]". His life and writings and views and what he did for others would be closely examined, although it is not known if his alleged anti-Semitism (which would be considered a serious matter by the Church if it is true) played a role.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254932/a-pilgrimage-in-england-traces-gk-chesterton-s-path-in-hope-of-his-beatification | title=A pilgrimage in England traces G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton's path in hope of his beatification }}</ref>

===Literary===
Chesterton's socio-economic system of Distributism affected the sculptor [[Eric Gill]], who established a commune of Catholic artists at [[Ditchling]] in Sussex. The Ditchling group developed a journal called ''The Game'', in which they expressed many Chestertonian principles, particularly anti-industrialism and an advocacy of religious family life.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}} His novel ''[[The Man Who Was Thursday]]'' inspired the Irish Republican leader [[Michael Collins (Irish leader)|Michael Collins]] with the idea that "If you didn't seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out."<ref>Forester, Margery (2006). ''Michael Collins – The Lost Leader'', Gill & MacMillan, p. 35.</ref> Collins's favourite work of Chesterton was ''[[The Napoleon of Notting Hill]]'', and he was "almost fanatically attached to it", according to his friend [[William Darling (politician)|Sir William Darling]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mackay |first=James |title=Michael Collins: A Life |publisher=Mainstream Publishing |year=1996 |location=London, England |page=Chapter 2}}</ref> His [[Wikisource:Page:1909 Sep 18 gk chesterton002.jpg|column]] in ''[[The Illustrated London News]]'' on 18 September 1909 had a profound effect on [[Mahatma Gandhi]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gandhi |first=Rajmohan |title=Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire |publisher=University of California Press |year=2007 |location=Los Angeles |pages=139–141}}</ref> [[P. N. Furbank]] asserts that Gandhi was "thunderstruck" when he read it,<ref>{{Citation |last=Furbank |first=P.&nbsp;N. |title=G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: A Centenary Appraisal |year=1974 |editor-last=Sullivan |editor-first=John |contribution=Chesterton the Edwardian |publisher=Harper and Row}}</ref> while Martin Green notes that "Gandhi was so delighted with this that he told ''[[Indian Opinion]]'' to reprint it".<ref>{{Citation |last=Green |first=Martin B. |title=Gandhi: Voice of a New Age Revolution |page=266 |year=2009 |publisher=Axios}}</ref> Another convert was Canadian media theorist [[Marshall McLuhan]], who said that the book ''What's Wrong with the World'' (1910) changed his life in terms of ideas and religion.<ref>Marchand, Philip (1998). ''Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger: A Biography''. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 28–30.</ref> The author [[Neil Gaiman]] stated that he grew up reading Chesterton in his school's library, and that ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'' influenced his own book ''[[Neverwhere]]''. Gaiman based the character [[List of The Sandman characters#Fiddler's Green|Gilbert]] from the comic book ''[[The Sandman (comic book)|The Sandman]]'' on Chesterton,<ref>Bender, Hy (2000). ''The Sandman Companion: A Dreamer's Guide to the Award-Winning Comic Series'' DC Comics, {{ISBN|1-56389-644-3}}.</ref> and ''[[Good Omens]]'', the novel Gaiman co-wrote with [[Terry Pratchett]], is dedicated to Chesterton. The Argentine author and essayist [[Jorge Luis Borges]] cited Chesterton as influential on his fiction, telling interviewer [[Richard Burgin (writer)|Richard Burgin]] that "Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story".<ref>Burgin, Richard (1969). ''Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges''. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, p. 35.</ref>

===Education===
Chesterton's many references to education and human formation have inspired a variety of educators including the 69 schools of the Chesterton Schools Network,<ref>{{cite web|last=Kenney|first=Nora|url=https://www.city-journal.org/article/an-atmosphere-of-joy|title=An Atmosphere of Joy|work=City Journal|date=14 February 2024}}</ref> which includes the [[Chesterton Academy]] founded by [[Dale Ahlquist]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Our Network Schools |url=https://chestertonschoolsnetwork.org/schools |access-date=23 December 2022 |publisher=Chesterton Schools Network}}</ref> and the Italian Scuola Libera G. K. Chesterton in San Benedetto del Tronto, Marche.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.scuolachesterton.org/|title=Scuola &#124; Scuola Chesterton &#124; San Benedetto Del Tronto|website=Scuola Chesterton}}</ref> The publisher and educator [[Christopher Perrin]] (who completed his doctoral work on Chesterton) makes frequent reference to Chesterton in his work with [[Classical education movement|classical schools]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Teacher as Muse |url=https://greathearts.institute/the-teacher-as-muse/ |access-date=23 December 2022 |publisher=Virtue (from the Great Hearts Institute)}}</ref>

=== Namesakes ===
In 1974, [[Ian Boyd (academic)|Ian Boyd]], founded ''[[The Chesterton Review]]'', a scholarly journal devoted to Chesterton and his circle. The journal is published by the G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture based in Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Chesterton Review |url=https://www.pdcnet.org/chesterton |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210512121454/https://www.pdcnet.org/chesterton |archive-date=12 May 2021 |access-date=12 May 2021 |publisher=Philosophy Documentation Center}}</ref>

In 1996, [[Dale Ahlquist]] founded the American Chesterton Society to explore and promote Chesterton's writings.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton – Apostolate of Common Sense |url=https://www.chesterton.org/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191226090641/https://www.chesterton.org/ |archive-date=26 December 2019 |access-date=13 November 2019}}</ref>

In 2008, a [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] high school, [[Chesterton Academy]], opened in the [[Minneapolis]] area. In the same year Scuola Libera Chesterton opened in [[San Benedetto del Tronto]], Italy.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Scuola Libera G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton|url=https://chestertonschoolsnetwork.org/directory/scuola-libera-gk-chesterton|access-date=8 July 2021|website=Chesterton Schools Network|date=16 April 2019 |language=en-US}}</ref>

In 2012, a crater on the planet [[Mercury (planet)|Mercury]] was named Chesterton after the author.<ref>{{Citation |title=Chesterton |date=17 September 2012 |url=https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/15033?__fsk=-188654396 |work=Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130218052720/http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/15033?__fsk=-188654396 |place=United States |publisher=Geological Survey |access-date=18 September 2012 |archive-date=18 February 2013 |url-status=live}}</ref>

In 2014, G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton Academy of Chicago, a [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] high school, opened in [[Highland Park, Illinois]].<ref>{{Citation |title=School built around G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton to open in Highland Park |date=19 March 2014 |url=http://highlandpark.suntimes.com/2014/03/19/school-built-around-g-k-chesterton-to-open-in-highland-park/  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140525233124/http://highlandpark.suntimes.com/2014/03/19/school-built-around-g-k-chesterton-to-open-in-highland-park/ |place=United States Chicago |publisher=highlandpark suntimes |access-date=25 May 2014 |archive-date=25 May 2014 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

A fictionalised G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton is the central character in the ''Young Chesterton Chronicles'', a series of [[young adult fiction|young adult]] adventure novels by John McNichol,<ref>{{cite book |last1=McNichol |first1=John |title=The Tripods Attack!: The Young Chesterton Chronicles Book 1 |date=2017 |publisher=Hillside Education |isbn=978-0-9991706-0-1 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=McNichol |first1=John |title=The Emperor of North America: Volume 2 of Young Chesterton Chronicles |date=2021 |publisher=Hillside Education |isbn=978-1-7331383-4-5 |language=en}}</ref> and in the ''G K Chesterton Mystery series'', a series of detective novels by the Australian author [[Kel Richards]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Richards |first=Kel |url=https://archive.org/details/murderinmummysto00kelr |title=Murder in the Mummy's Tomb: A G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton Mystery |year=2002 |publisher=RiverOak Pub. |isbn=978-1589199637 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Another fictional character named Gil Chesterton is a food and wine critic who works for KACL, the Seattle radio station featured in the American television series ''[[Frasier]]''.

==Major works==
{{Main|G. K. Chesterton bibliography}}
{{Library resources box|onlinebooks=yes|by=yes|viaf=14767719|}}

===Books===
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The Napoleon of Notting Hill |year=1904 |editor-last=Ward |editor-first=M. |publisher= |ref=none |title-link=The Napoleon of Notting Hill}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=Robert Browning |year=1903 |author-mask=3 |publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]] |ref=none}}<ref>{{cite journal |title=Review of ''Robert Browning'' by G. K. Chesterton |journal=The Athenaeum |issue=3946 |date=13 June 1903 |pages=744–746 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oKA5AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA744}}</ref>
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=Heretics |year=1905 |author-mask=3 |publisher=[[John Lane (publisher)|John Lane]] |title-link=Heretics (book)}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=Charles Dickens: A Critical Study |url=https://archive.org/stream/charlesdickenscr01ches/charlesdickenscr01ches_djvu.txt |page=299 |year=1906 |author-mask=3 |publisher=Dodd, Mead & Co. |ref=none}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The Man Who Was Thursday |year=1908a |author-mask=3 |ref=none |title-link=The Man Who Was Thursday}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=Orthodoxy |year=1908b |author-mask=3 |title-link=Orthodoxy (book)}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The Innocence of Father Brown |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/204/204-h/204-h.htm |author-mask=3 |date=1911a |publisher= [[Cassell (publisher)|Cassel and Co]] London, published in [[Penguin Books]], Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1950 (Number 765, Mystery and crime, "Father Brown" series 1/6, 248 p.). Reprinted 1951 etc.|ref=none}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The Ballad of the White Horse |year=1911b |author-mask=3 |publisher= |ref=none |title-link=The Ballad of the White Horse}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=Manalive |year=1912 |author-mask=3 |ref=none |title-link=Manalive}}
* ''[[The Flying Inn]]'' (1914)
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The Crimes of England |year=1916 |author-mask=3 |ref=none}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=Father Brown |author-mask=3 |type=short stories |ref=none |title-link=Father Brown}} (detective fiction)
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The New Jerusalem |url=http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/New_Jerusalem.txt |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170115201317/http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/New_Jerusalem.txt |archive-date=15 January 2017 |year=1920 |editor-last=Ward |editor-first=M. |author-mask=3 |publisher= }}
* {{cite book |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The Man Who Knew Too Much |orig-year=1922 | year=2018|author-mask=3|ref=none |title-link=The Man Who Knew Too Much (book) |publisher=Simon & Brown |isbn=978-1731700568}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=Eugenics and Other Evils |year=1922 |author-mask=3 |ref=none |title-link=s:Eugenics and other Evils}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=Saint Francis of Assisi |year=1923 |author-mask=3 |ref=none}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The Everlasting Man |year=1925 |author-mask=3 |ref=none |title-link=The Everlasting Man}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=William Cobbett |year=1925 |author-mask=3 |ref=none}} 
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=[[Saint Thomas Aquinas (Chesterton)|Saint Thomas Aquinas]] |year=1933 |author-mask=3 |ref=none}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The Well and the Shallows |year=1935 |author-mask=3 |ref=none}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The Autobiography |year=1936 |author-mask=3}}
* {{Citation |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |title=The Common Man |url=http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Common_Man.txt |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170115201317/http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Common_Man.txt |archive-date=15 January 2017 |year=1950 |editor-last=Ward |editor-first=M. |author-mask=3 |publisher=  |ref=none}}

===Short stories===
* [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Trees_of_Pride "The Trees of Pride"], 1922
* "The Crime of the Communist", ''Collier's Weekly'', July 1934.
* "The Three Horsemen", ''Collier's Weekly'', April 1935.
* "The Ring of the Lovers", ''Collier's Weekly'', April 1935.
* "A Tall Story", ''Collier's Weekly'', April 1935.
* "The Angry Street – A Bad Dream", ''Famous Fantastic Mysteries'', February 1947.

=== Plays ===

* ''[[Magic (play)|Magic]]'', 1913.

== References ==
=== Citations ===
{{Reflist}}

=== Sources ===
'''Cited biographies'''
<!-- these are used in sfn links above -->
{{refbegin}}
* {{Citation |last = Barker |first = Dudley |title = G. K. Chesterton: A Biography |year = 1973 |location = London, England |publisher = Constable |isbn=978-0-09-457830-2 }}
* {{Citation |last = Ker |first = Ian |title = G. K. Chesterton: A Biography |year = 2011 |location = Oxford, England |publisher = Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-960128-8 |author-link = Ian Ker }}
* {{Citation |last = Pearce |first = Joseph |author-link = Joseph Pearce |title = Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton |year = 1996 |location = London, England |publisher = Hodder and Stoughton |isbn=978-0-34-067132-0 }}
* {{Citation |last = Ward |first = Maisie |title = Gilbert Keith Chesterton |url = https://archive.org/stream/gilbertkeithches001579mbp#page/n7/mode/2up |year = 1944 |publisher = [[Sheed & Ward]] |author-link = Maisie Ward }}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
<!--These works are not cited; if you're using one, remove the "|ref=none" and move the citation to the section above-->

{{Refbegin|30em}}
* {{Citation |last=Ahlquist |first=Dale |title=The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton |year=2012 |publisher=[[Ignatius Press]] |isbn=978-1-58617-675-4 |ref=none}}
* {{Citation |last=Ahlquist |first=Dale |title=G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense |year=2003 |author-mask=3 |publisher=[[Ignatius Press]] |isbn=978-0-89870-857-8 |ref=none}}
* Belmonte, Kevin (2011). ''Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life and Impact of G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton''. Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson.
* Blackstock, Alan R. (2012). ''The Rhetoric of Redemption: Chesterton, Ethical Criticism, and the Common Man''. New York. Peter Lang Publishing.
* Braybrooke, Patrick (1922). [https://archive.org/stream/gkchesterton00brayuoft#page/n7/mode/2up ''Gilbert Keith Chesterton'']. London: Chelsea Publishing Company.
* [[Émile Cammaerts|Cammaerts, Émile]] (1937). ''The Laughing Prophet: The Seven Virtues nd G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton''. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.
* Campbell, W. E. (1908). [http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015028094012;view=1up;seq=777 "G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: Inquisitor and Democrat"], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106191659/https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015028094012;view=1up;seq=777 |date=6 November 2018 }} ''The Catholic World'', Vol. LXXXVIII, pp.&nbsp;769–782.
* Campbell, W. E. (1909). [https://archive.org/stream/catholicworldvo14fathgoog#page/n14/mode/2up "G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: Catholic Apologist"] ''The Catholic World'', Vol. LXXXIX, No. 529, pp.&nbsp;1–12.
* [[Cecil Chesterton|Chesterton, Cecil]] (1908). [https://archive.org/stream/gkchestertoncrit00ches#page/n7/mode/2up ''G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: A Criticism'']. London: Alston Rivers (Rep. by [https://archive.org/stream/cu31924013463512#page/n7/mode/2up John Lane Company], 1909).
* Clipper, Lawrence J. (1974). ''G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton''. New York: Twayne Publishers.
* Coates, John (1984). ''Chesterton and the Edwardian Cultural Crisis''. Hull University Press.
* Coates, John (2002). ''G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton as Controversialist, Essayist, Novelist, and Critic''. [[Lewiston, New York]]: [[Edwin Mellen Press]].
* Conlon, D. J. (1987). ''G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: A Half Century of Views''. Oxford University Press.
* {{Citation |last=Cooney |first=A |title=G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton, One Sword at Least |year=1999 |place=London |publisher=Third Way |isbn=978-0-9535077-1-9 |ref=none}}
* {{Citation |last=Coren |first=Michael |title=Gilbert: The Man who was G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton |year=2001 |orig-year=1989 |place=Vancouver |publisher=Regent College Publishing |isbn=9781573831956 |oclc=45190713 |ref=none |author-link=Michael Coren}}
* Corrin, Jay P. (1981). ''G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton & Hilaire Belloc: The Battle Against Modernity''. Ohio University Press.
* Ervine, St. John G. (1922). [https://archive.org/stream/cu31924013262807#page/n101/mode/2up "G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton"]. In: ''Some Impressions of my Elders''. New York: The Macmillan Company, pp.&nbsp;90–112.
* {{Citation |last=Ffinch |first=Michael |title=G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton |year=1986 |publisher=Harper & Row |ref=none}}
* [[iarchive:gilbert-magazine-vol.-12-no.-2-3-special-issue-chesterton-the-jews-november-december-2008|''Gilbert Magazine'']] (November/December 2008). [[iarchive:gilbert-magazine-vol.-12-no.-2-3-special-issue-chesterton-the-jews-november-december-2008|Vol. 12, No. 2-3, ''Special Issue: Chesterton & The Jews''.]]
* Haldane, John. 'Chesterton's Philosophy of Education', philosophy, Vol. 65, No. 251 (Jan. 1990), pp.&nbsp;65–80.
* [[Christopher Hitchens|Hitchens, Christopher]] (2012). [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/the-reactionary/308889/ "The Reactionary"], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161210200344/http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/the-reactionary/308889/ |date=10 December 2016 }} ''The Atlantic''.
* Herts, B. Russell (1914). [https://archive.org/stream/depreciations00hertrich#page/n67/mode/2up "Gilbert K. Chesterton: Defender of the Discarded"]. In: ''Depreciations''. New York: Albert & Charles Boni, pp.&nbsp;65–86.
* Hollis, Christopher (1970). ''The Mind of Chesterton''. London: Hollis & Carter.
* Hunter, Lynette (1979). ''G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: Explorations in Allegory''. London: Macmillan Press.
* [[Stanley Jaki|Jaki, Stanley]] (1986). ''Chesterton: A Seer of Science''. University of Illinois Press.
* [[Stanley Jaki|Jaki, Stanley]] (1986). "Chesterton's Landmark Year". In: ''Chance or Reality and Other Essays''. University Press of America.
* [[Hugh Kenner|Kenner, Hugh]] (1947). ''Paradox in Chesterton''. New York: [[Sheed & Ward]].
* [[Roger Kimball|Kimball, Roger]] (2011). [http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/G--K--Chesterton--master-of-rejuvenation-7138 "G. K. Chesterton: Master of Rejuvenation"], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120927055650/http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/G--K--Chesterton--master-of-rejuvenation-7138 |date=27 September 2012 }} ''The New Criterion'', Vol. XXX, p.&nbsp;26.
* [[Russell Kirk|Kirk, Russell]] (1971). "Chesterton, Madmen, and Madhouses", ''Modern Age'', Vol. XV, No. 1, pp.&nbsp;6–16.
* Knight, Mark (2004). ''Chesterton and Evil''. Fordham University Press.
* Lea, F. A. (1947). "G. K. Chesterton". In: [[Donald Attwater]] (ed.) ''Modern Christian Revolutionaries''. New York: Devin-Adair Co.
* McCleary, Joseph R. (2009). ''The Historical Imagination of G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: Locality, Patriotism, and Nationalism''. Taylor & Francis.
* [[Marshall McLuhan|McLuhan, Marshall]] (January 1936), [http://hdl.handle.net/10222/62265 "G. K. Chesterton: A Practical Mystic"], {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210529050420/https://dalspace.library.dal.ca//handle/10222/62265 |date=29 May 2021 }} ''[[Dalhousie Review]]'', '''15''' (4): 455–464.
* {{Citation |last=McNichol |first=J. |title=The Young Chesterton Chronicles |volume=Book One: The Tripods Attack! |year=2008 |place=Manchester, NH |publisher=Sophia Institute |isbn=978-1-933184-26-5 |ref=none}}
* Oddie, William (2010). ''Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC, 1874–1908''. Oxford University Press.
* [[Alfred Richard Orage|Orage, Alfred Richard.]] (1922). [https://archive.org/stream/cu31924026942031#page/n157/mode/2up "G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton on Rome and Germany"]. In: ''Readers and Writers (1917–1921)''. London: George Allen & Unwin, pp.&nbsp;155–161.
* Oser, Lee (2007). ''The Return of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Eliot, Tolkien, and the Romance of History''. University of Missouri Press.
* {{Citation |last=Paine |first=Randall |title=The Universe and Mr. Chesterton |year=1999 |publisher=Sherwood Sugden |isbn=978-0-89385-511-6 |ref=none}}
* {{Citation |last=Pearce |first=Joseph |title=Wisdom and Innocence – A Life of G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton |year=1997 |publisher=[[Ignatius Press]] |isbn=978-0-89870-700-7 |ref=none |author-link=Joseph Pearce}}
* Peck, William George (1920). [https://archive.org/stream/fromchaostocatho00peckuoft#page/52/mode/2up "Mr. G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton and the Return to Sanity"]. In: ''From Chaos to Catholicism''. London: George Allen & Unwin, pp.&nbsp;52–92.
* [[Raymond, E. T.]] (1919). [https://archive.org/stream/cu31924028389678#page/n71/mode/2up "Mr. G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton"]. In: ''All & Sundry''. London: T. Fisher Unwin, pp.&nbsp;68–76.
* [[James V. Schall|Schall, James V.]] (2000). ''Schall on Chesterton: Timely Essays on Timeless Paradoxes''. Catholic University of America Press.
* Scott, William T. (1912). [https://archive.org/stream/chestertonothere00scot#page/n3/mode/2up ''Chesterton and Other Essays'']. Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham.
* Seaber, Luke (2011). ''G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton's Literary Influence on George Orwell: A Surprising Irony''. [[Lewiston, New York]]: [[Edwin Mellen Press]].
* [[Wilfrid Sheed|Sheed, Wilfrid]] (1971). "Chesterbelloc and the Jews", ''The New York Review of Books'', Vol. XVII, No. 3.
* Shuster, Norman (1922). [https://archive.org/stream/catholicspirit00shus#page/228/mode/2up "The Adventures of a Journalist: G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton"]. In: ''The Catholic Spirit in Modern English Literature''. New York: The Macmillan Company, pp.&nbsp;229–248.
* [[Edwin Emery Slosson|Slosson, Edwin E.]] (1917). [https://archive.org/stream/sixmajorprophets00slosiala#page/128/mode/2up "G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: Knight Errant of Orthodoxy"]. In: ''Six Major Prophets''. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, pp.&nbsp;129–189.
* [[Marion Couthouy Smith|Smith, Marion Couthouy]] (1921). [https://archive.org/stream/catholicworld113pauluoft#page/162/mode/2up "The Rightness of G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton"], ''The Catholic World'', Vol. CXIII, No. 678, pp.&nbsp;163–168.
* Stapleton, Julia (2009). ''Christianity, Patriotism, and Nationhood: The England of G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton''. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
* {{Citation |last=Sullivan |first=John |title=G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: A Centenary Appraisal |year=1974 |place=London |publisher=Paul Elek |isbn=978-0-236-17628-1 |ref=none}}
* [[Joseph de Tonquedec|Tonquédec, Joseph de]] (1920). [https://archive.org/stream/gkchestertonsesi00tonq#page/n7/mode/2up ''G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton, ses Idées et son Caractère''], Nouvelle Librairie National.
* [[Maisie Ward|Ward, Maisie]] (1952). ''Return to Chesterton'', London: Sheed & Ward.
* West, Julius (1915). [https://archive.org/stream/criticalstudy00westuoft#page/n9/mode/2up ''G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton: A Critical Study'']. London: Martin Secker.
* {{Citation |last=Williams |first=Donald T |title=Mere Humanity: G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton, C.&nbsp;S. Lewis, and J.&nbsp;R.&nbsp;R. Tolkien on the Human Condition |year=2006 |ref=none}}
{{Refend}}

==External links==
{{sister project links|d=y|wikt=no|s=Author:G. K. Chesterton|commons=Gilbert Keith Chesterton|n=no|voy=no|mw=no|species=no|m=no|b=no|v=no}}
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/g-k-chesterton}}
* {{Gutenberg author |id=80|name=G. K. Chesterton}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)|name=G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton|author=yes}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Gilbert Keith Chesterton}}
* {{Librivox author |id=426}}
* [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Search/Home?lookfor=%22Chesterton,%20G.%20K.%201874-1936.%22&type=author&inst= Works by G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton], at [[HathiTrust]]
* {{UK National Archives ID}}
* [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d_OFbxl1hD4S7pTg6Vchv8xJMMqxhhYffxRtgH9MZE4/pub What's Wrong: GKC in Periodicals] Articles by G. K. Chesterton in periodicals, with critical annotations.
* {{Citation |title=The American Chesterton Society |url=http://www.chesterton.org/ |access-date=28 October 2010}}.
* [http://essays.quotidiana.org/chesterton/ G. K. Chesterton: Quotidiana]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20170816084200/http://www.wheaton.edu/wadecenter/Authors/GK-Chesterton G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton research collection] at The Marion E. Wade Center at [[Wheaton College (Illinois)|Wheaton College]]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20151029081006/http://stmikes.utoronto.ca/kelly/760-2/ G.&nbsp;K. Chesterton Archival Collection] at the [[University of St. Michael's College]] at the [[University of Toronto]]
* {{PM20|FID=pe/003215}}
* {{Citation |title=Scuola Libera G. K. Chesterton |url=https://www.scuolachesterton.org/ |access-date=3 September 2023}}
* {{Citation |title=Società Chestertoniana Italiana |url=http://uomovivo.blogspot.com/ |access-date=3 September 2023}}

{{G. K. Chesterton}}
{{History of Catholic theology}}
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