Author:Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

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prolific English writer of the early 20th century; a popular and an influential writer during this period, inspiring many historic figures with his works. He was notably concerned in what he wrote with religious matters, and was received into the Catholic Church in 1922. Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox". He wrote in an off-hand, whimsical prose studded with startling formulations. For example: "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it." Pen name: G. K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Scans

Works

Fiction

• The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) (transcription project) (publ 1914, c. 1904)
• The Club of Queer Trades (1905) Illustrated by William E. Mears
• The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
• The Ball and the Cross (1909) (external scan)
• Manalive (1912)
• The Flying Inn (1914) (external scan)
• The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922)
• The Trees of Pride (1922)
• Tales of the Long Bow (1925) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2020
• The Return of Don Quixote (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2022
• The Sword of Wood (1928) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2023
• For Lovers Only (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• The Poet and the Lunatics (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• Four Faultless Felons (1930) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2025
• The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond (1937) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2032
• The Disadvantage of Having Two Heads (1938) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2033
• Daylight and Nightmare (1986) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2048
• Basil Howe (2001) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2048

Plays

• Magic: A Fantastic Comedy in a Prelude and Three Acts (1913)
• The Judgment of Dr. Johnson (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2022
• The Turkey and the Turk (1930) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2025
• The Surprise (1952) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2047

Father Brown

(Wikipedia article on Father Brown)

• The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)
• The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914)
• The Donnington Affair, with Max Pemberton (1914) Short story; no scan
• The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2021
• The Secret of Father Brown (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2022
• Father Brown Omnibus (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• The Scandal of Father Brown (1935) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2030

Non-fiction

• The Defendant (1901)
• Twelve Types (1902)
• Heretics (1905)
• All Things Considered (1908)
• Varied Types (1908)
• Orthodoxy (1909)
• Tremendous Trifles (1909) includes The Diabolist
• What's Wrong with the World (1910)
• Alarms and Discursions (1911)
• A Miscellany of Men (1912)
• The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)
• Letters to an Old Garibaldian (1915)
• The Crimes of England (1915)
• The Barbarism of Berlin (1914); US title: The Appetite of Tyranny (1915)
• Divorce versus Democracy (1916)
• A Short History of England (1917)
• Eugenics and other Evils (1917)
• Irish Impressions (1919)
• The New Jerusalem (1920)
• The Superstition of Divorce (1920)
• What I Saw in America (1922)
• The Everlasting Man (1925) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2020
• The Superstitions of the Sceptic (1925) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2020
• The Catholic Church and Conversion (1926) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2021
• Social Reform vs. Birth Control (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2022
• The Outline of Sanity (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2022
• The Thing: Why I am a Catholic (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• The Resurrection of Rome (1930) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2025
• Christendom in Dublin (1932) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2027
• Sidelights of New London and Newer York (1932) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2027
• All I Survey (1933) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2028
• The Way of the Cross (1935) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2030
• The Common Man (1950) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2045
• Platitudes Undone (1997) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2092

Biographies

• Charles Dickens (1903) (external scan)
• Robert Browning (1903)
• G.F. Watts (1904)
• George Bernard Shaw (1910)
• William Blake (1910)
• Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens (1911) (external scan)
• Samuel Johnson (1911)
• Lord Kitchener (1917)
• St. Francis (1923)
• William Cobbett (1925) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2020
• Robert Louis Stevenson (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2023
• Chaucer (Chesterton) (1932) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2027
• St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox (1933) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2029
• Autobiography (Chesterton) (1936) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2031

Collections

• The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900)
• Poems (1915)
• Wine, Water, and Song (1915)
• The Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Poems (1922)
• The Queen of Seven Swords (1926) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2021
• The Collected Poems of G.K. Chesterton (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2022
• Christmas Poems (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• New and Collected Poems (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• Ubi Ecclesia (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• The Grave of Arthur (1930) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2025
• New Poems (1932)

Individual poems

• Africa
• Alliterativism (1914)
• Americanisation
• Antichrist, or the Reunion of Christendom: An Ode
• The Aristocrat
• A Ballad of Abbreviations
• Ballad of the Sun
• The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
• Ballade d'une grande dame
• A Ballade of a Book-Reviewer
• A Ballade of an Anti-puritan
• A Ballade of Suicide
• A Ballade of the First Rain
• A Ballade of Theatricals
• Bay Combe
• The Beatific Vision ("Then Bernard smiled at me, that I should gaze⁠")
• The Beatific Vision ("Through what fierce incarnations, furled")
• Blessed are the Peacemakers
• A Broad Minded Bishop Rebukes The Verminous St. Francis
• By the Babe Unborn
• A Child of the Snows
• A Christmas Song for Three Guilds
• A Cider Song
• Confessional
• The Convert
• The Crusader Returns from Captivity
• The Dead Hero
• The Deluge
• The Donkey
• The Earth's Vigil
• An Election Echo
• Elegy in a Country Churchyard
• The Englishman
• Eternities
• Femina Contra Mundum
• For a War Memorial
• Glencoe
• Gloria in Profundis (1927)
• Gold Leaves
• The Great Minimum
• Greybeards at Play (1900)
• Happy, Who Like Ulysses (translation of Heureux qui comme Ulysse by Joachim du Bellay)
• Here is the little door
• The Higher Unity
• The Horrible History of Jones
• The House of Christmas
• The Human Tree
• A Hymn
• A Hymn for the Church Militant
• In Memoriam P. D.
• The Judgment Of England
• The Kingdom of Heaven
• The Last Hero
• Lepanto (1911)
• A Little Litany
• The Logical Vegetarian (1915)
• Lost
• Love's Trappist
• A Marriage Song
• The March of the Black Mountain (1913)
• The Mortal Answers
• Music
• The Mystery
• The Myth of Arthur
• The Nativity
• The New Fiction
• The New Freethinker
• The New Omar
• The Old Song
• On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in all Classes
• The Philanthropist
• The Praise of Dust
• A Prayer in Darkness
• The Revolutionist, or Lines to a Statesman
• On Righteous Indignation
• The Rolling English Road (1914)
• Rotarians (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2022
• The Secret People
• The Shakespeare Memorial
• The Skeleton
• The Song Against Grocers
• A Song of Gifts to God
• The Song of Right and Wrong
• The Song of the Oak
• The Song of the Strange Ascetic (1913)
• The Song of the Wheels
• The Song of Quoodle
• Songs of Education
• Sonnet
• Sonnet with the Compliments of the Season
• St. Francis Xavier
• The Strange Music
• The Sword of Suprise
• To Edmund Clerihew Bentley
• To Hilaire Belloc
• To M. E. W.
• To St. Michael in Time of Peace
• To the Unknown Warrior
• The Towers of Time
• Tribute to Gladstone
• The Truce of Christmas
• The Unpardonable Sin
• Variations of an Air
• When I Came Back to Fleet Street
• Who Goes Home?
• The Wife of Flanders
• Wine and Water
• The Wise Men
• A Word

Essays & Other

• How to Help Annexation (1918)
• Introduction to Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" (1907)
• The End of the Roman Road (1924) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2020

Collections of Essays

• Utopia of Usurers and Other Essays (1917)
• The Uses of Diversity (1920)
• Fancies versus Fads (1923) (transcription project)
• Generally Speaking (1928) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• Come to Think of It (1930) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2025
• All is Grist (1931) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2026
• Sidelights on New London and Newer York (1932) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2027
• All I Survey (1933) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2028
• Avowals and Denials (1934) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2029
• The Well and the Shallows (1935) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2030
• As I Was Saying (1936) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2031
• The End of the Armistice (1940) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2035
• The Common Man (1950) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2045
• A Handful of Authors (1953) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2048
• The Glass Walking-Stick (1955) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2050
• Where All Roads Lead (1961) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2056
• The Spice of Life and Other Essays (1965) U.S. public domain selections only
• Chesterton on Shakespeare (1972) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2067
• The Apostle and the Wild Ducks (1975) U.S. public domain selections only
• On Lying in Bed and Other Essays (2000) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2095

Speeches & Debates

• Culture and the Coming Peril (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2022
• Do We Agree? (1928) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2023

Other

• "Introduction" in Bohemia's claim for freedom (1915)
• Preface Love and Freindship and other early works, Austen, J. New York: Stokes. 1922
• Brave New Family (1990) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2048
• The Coloured Lands (1938) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2033
• G.K.C. as M.C. (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• The Spirit of Christmas (1984) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2048

Works about Chesterton

• "Chesterton, Gilbert Keith," in A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, by John William Cousin, London: J. M. Dent & Sons (1910)
• "Chesterton, Gilbert Keith," in Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed., 1911)
• "Chesterton, Gilbert Keith," in Collier's New Encyclopedia, New York: P. F. Collier & Son Co. (1921)

Parodies of G. K. Chesterton

• Some Damnable Errors About Christmas by Max Beerbohm

Works available on Wikilivres

(These works are protected in the United States (where Wikisource servers are located) by its legislature's copyright laws, and should not be downloaded in this country, but this is not the case in New Zealand, the U.K., Canada, Australia and many other countries of the world. See Help:Public_domain#Copyright terms by country to help determine if it is available under the laws of your country. Wikilivres is not owned by the Wikimedia Foundation.)

• Fancies Versus Fads, 1923
• St. Francis, 1923
• The Everlasting Man, 1925
• Tales of the Long Bow, 1925
• The Catholic Church and Conversion, 1926
• The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926
• William Cobbett, 1926
• The Return of Don Quixote, 1927
• The Secret of Father Brown, 1927
• Rotarians, 1927
• Robert Louis Stevenson, 1927
• The Outline of Sanity, 1927
• Do We Agree?, 1928
• The Sword of Wood, 1928
• The Poet and the Lunatics, 1929
• Four Faultless Felons, 1929
• The Thing, 1929
• For Lovers Only, 1929
• St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, 1933
• All I Survey, 1933
• The Scandal of Father Brown, 1935
• The Well and the Shallows, 1935
• As I Was Saying, 1936
• Autobiography, 1936
• The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond, 1937
• The Coloured Lands, 1938
• The Common Man, 1950
• The Apostle and the Wild Ducks, 1952
• The Spice of Life and Other Essays, 1964