Author:G. K. Chesterton

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Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

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A 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."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Scans

Works

Fiction

• The Ball and the Cross (1909) (External scan)
• Basil Howe (2001) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2048
• The Club of Queer Trades (1905) (External scan)
• Daylight and Nightmare (1986) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2048
• The Disadvantage of Having Two Heads (1938) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2033
• The Flying Inn (1914) (External scan)
• For Lovers Only (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• Four Faultless Felons (1930) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2025
• Manalive (1912)
• The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922)
• The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
• The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) (External scan) (publ 1906)
• The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond (1937) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2032
• The Poet and the Lunatics (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• 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
• Tales of the Long Bow (1925) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2020
• The Trees of Pride (1922)

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 Surprise (1952) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2047
• The Turkey and the Turk (1930) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2025

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

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

Biographies

• Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens (1911) (External scan)
• Charles Dickens (1903) (External scan)
• George Bernard Shaw (1910)
• G.F. Watts (1904)
• Lord Kitchener (1917)
• Robert Browning (1903)
• William Blake (1910)
• Samuel Johnson (1911)

• Chaucer (Chesterton) (1932) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2027
• Autobiography (Chesterton) (1936) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2031
• St. Francis of Assisi (1923) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2018
• Robert Louis Stevenson (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2022
• St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox (1933) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2028
• William Cobbett (1925) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2020

Poetry

• Greybeards at Play (1900)
• The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900)
• The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
• 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
• Gloria in Profundis (1927)
• Ubi Ecclesia (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• The Grave of Arthur (1930) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2025

Anthologized

• "The Wife of Flanders" from Poems of the Great War (1914).
• From A Treasury of War Poetry, ... 1914-1919 (1917):
  • "The Wife of Flanders", p. 77; "The Ballad of St. Barbara", p. 220.

Selected Poems

• Alliterativism (1914)
• Americanisation
• Antichrist, or the Reunion of Christendom: An Ode
• The Aristocrat
• A Ballad of Abbreviations
• A Ballade of an Anti-puritan
• A Ballad of Suicide
• A Ballade of Theatricals
• A Broad Minded Bishop Rebukes The Verminous St. Francis
• By the Babe Unborn
• A Child of the Snows
• Christmas Poems (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• The Convert
• The Deluge
• The Donkey
• Elegy in a Country Churchyard
• The Englishman
• Eternities
• Femina Contra Mundum
• For a War Memorial
• Gold Leaves
• The Great Minimum
• Here is the little door
• The Higher Unity
• The Horrible History of Jones
• The House of Christmas
• The Human Tree
• A Hymn
• The Judgment Of England
• The Last Hero
• Lepanto (1915)
• A Little Litany
• The Logical Vegetarian (1915)
• The Mystery
• The Myth of Arthur
• New and Collected Poems (1929) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2024
• The New Fiction
• The New Omar
• New Poems (1932)
• The Old Song
• On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in all Classes
• The Philanthropist
• The Praise of Dust
• A Prayer in Darkness
• The Rolling English Road (1914)
• Rotarians (1927) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2022
• The Secret People
• The Skeleton
• The Song Against Grocers
• The Song of the Oak
• The Song of Right and Wrong
• The Song of the Strange Ascetic (1913)
• The Song of Quoodle
• The Song of the Wheels
• Songs of Education
• St. Francis Xavier
• The Strange Music
• The Sword of Suprise
• To Belloc
• To St. Michael in Time of Peace
• To the Unknown Warrior
• The Towers of Time
• Tribute to Gladstone
• The Unpardonable Sin
• Variations of an Air
• Who Goes Home?
• Wine and Water
• The Wise Men
• A Word

Essays & Other

• The End of the Roman Road (1924) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2019
• How to Help Annexation (1918)
• Introduction to Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" (1907)

Collections of Essays

• All I Survey (1933) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2028
• All is Grist (1931) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2026
• The Apostle and the Wild Ducks (1975) U.S. public domain selections only
• As I Was Saying (1936) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2031
• Avowals and Denials (1934) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2029
• Chesterton on Shakespeare (1972) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2067
• Come to Think of It (1930) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2025
• The Common Man (1950) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2045
• The End of the Armistice (1940) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2035
• Fancies Versus Fads (1923) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2018
• Generally Speaking (1928) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2023
• The Glass Walking-Stick (1955) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2050
• A Handful of Authors (1953) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2048
• On Lying in Bed and Other Essays (2000) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2095
• Sidelights on New London and Newer York (1932) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2027
• The Spice of Life and Other Essays (1965) U.S. public domain selections only
• The Uses of Diversity (1920)
• Utopia of Usurers and Other Essays (1917)
• The Well and the Shallows (1935) – Copyrighted in the United States until 2030
• Where All Roads Lead (1961) – Copyrighted in the United States until (2056)

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

• 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 G. K. Chesterton

• “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)

Works available at 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 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