G. K. Chesterton (1874--1936)

I am a shameless G. K. Chesterton enthusiast.  If you want to know why, read a few of these quotations.  If nothing there interests you, then you probably won't enjoy reading more of him.

I lead a monthly book club (to which you are most welcome to join!) in Watsonville that chiefly reads Chesterton.  I wrote my master's thesis on Chesterton.  He inspires me richly.

If you would like to learn a bit about him, here is some background:

• A Biographical Start
• A Very Brief Religious Biography

God's Knight and Jester: G. K. Chesterton (1874--1936)

Chestertonia Often Found in Class:

• Some Ideas on Mythology
• For Midsummer
• On Bottom the Weaver

• "On Cheese"
• "On Fragments" by G. K. Chesterton 
• In your notes, answer this question: How is bread and cheese invoked differently here than in the essay on cheese?  

• "The Blue Cross"
• Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown

• "A Piece of Chalk"

• Notes on the Essay

 

G. K. C.: Essays and Criticism

• What's Wrong
• "The Wildness of Domesticity"

• All Things Considered

•  "An Essay on Two Cities"!

• Tremendous Trifles

• Required reading at UCSC (at some point)
• "A Piece of Chalk"
• The Defendant
  • "A Defense of Skeletons"
  • "A Defense of Ugly Things"
  • "A Defense of Baby-Worship"

• The Uses of Diversity
• A Defense of Nonsense
• Essays: 1935-1936
• Orthodoxy
• A Kind of Spiritual Autobiography
• Heretics
• Robert Browning
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• Literary Criticism: Varied Types
• Leo Tolstoy
• Charles Dickens: A Critical Study
• G. F. Watts
• Alarms and Discursions
• Tennyson
• Quotes: Wit and Wisdom of G. K. C.
• Autobiography 

G. K. C.: Poetry

• Greybeards at Play
• The Rolling English Road
• The Ballad of the White Horse
• The Wild Knight and Other Poems
• The Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Verses
• More Poems

G. K. C.: Stories and Novels

• Tales of the Long Bow
• The Innocence of Father Brown
• The Wisdom of Father Brown
• Father Brown (from Collected Works)
• The Man Who Knew Too Much
• The Club of Queer Trades
• The Napoleon of Notting Hill
• The Ball and the Cross
• The Flying Inn
• Manalive

G. K. C.: The More Political Side: Distributism, History, etc.

• A Short History of England
• The Crimes of England
• What I Saw in America
• Irish Impressions
• The Barbarism of Berlin
• Eugenics and Other Evils
• The Utopia of Userers and Other Essays
• Works from Gutenberg
• Google Free G. K. C. Books

Chesterton's Writing Chair