Most Popular Books by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

When Chesterton defends and explains the great Victorian author, his arguments prophetically defend his own writing. Dickens, for instance, was accused of being superficial. So was Chesterton. Of such critics, Chesterton says, “they cannot grasp that there is foam upon the deep seas.” Such critics are too easily impressed by depressing literature and the confinement inflicted by sorrow. They cannot appreciate the difficulty of portraying happiness and the liberty provided by laughter. Aeterna Press

Father Brown is a seemingly innocent man of the cloth, whimsical yet wise, who exhibits uncanny insight into ingeniously tricky human problems. This collection includes twelve mysteries solved by the redoubtable Father Brown.

Utopia of Usurers is a classic collection of political essays which comment upon the conditions of Great Britain by G.K. Chesterton. What is it that angers Chesterton and fills him with grim forebodings for the future of his island? Many things and, especially, many persons. But chiefly the capitalists, the upper middle class, the usurers, or however they be termed, and the fear of the servile state, the state in which art and literature and science and efficiency and morality and everything else that has value in the eyes of mortal man become the humble servants of the money-changers, in short, the "utopia of usurers." --The Dial, 1918.

The Ballad of the White Horse by Gilbert Keith Chesterton BOOK I. THE VISION OF THE KING Before the gods that made the godsHad seen their sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse ValeWas cut out of the grass.Before the gods that made the godsHad drunk at dawn their fill, The White Horse of the White Horse ValeWas hoary on the hill.Age beyond age on British land, Aeons on aeons gone, Was peace and war in western hills, And the White Horse looked on.For the White Horse knew EnglandWhen there was none to know;He saw the first oar break or bend, He saw heaven fall and the world end, O God, how long ago.For the end of the world was long ago, And all we dwell to-dayAs children of some second birth, Like a strange people left on earthAfter a judgment day.For the end of the world was long ago, When the ends of the world waxed free, When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves, And the sun drowned in the sea.When Caesar''s sun fell out of the skyAnd whoso hearkened rightCould only hear the plungingOf the nations in the night.When the ends of the earth came marching inTo torch and cresset gleam.And the roads of the world that lead to RomeWere filled with faces that moved like foam, Like faces in a dream.And men rode out of the eastern lands, Broad river and burning plain;Trees that are Titan flowers to see, And tiger skies, striped horribly, With tints of tropic rain.Where Ind''s enamelled peaks ariseAround that inmost one, Where ancient eagles on its brink, Vast as archangels, gather and drinkThe sacrament of the sun.And men brake out of the northern lands, Enormous lands alone, Where a spell is laid upon life and lustAnd the rain is changed to a silver dustAnd the sea to a great green stone.And a Shape that moveth murkilyIn mirrors of ice and night, Hath blanched with fear all beasts and birds, As death and a shock of evil wordsBlast a man''s hair with white.And the cry of the palms and the purple moons, Or the cry of the frost and foam, Swept ever around an inmost place, And the din of distant race on raceCried and replied round Rome.And there was death on the EmperorAnd night upon the Pope: And Alfred, hiding in deep grass, Hardened his heart with hope.A sea-folk blinder than the seaBroke all about his land, But Alfred up against them bareAnd gripped the ground and grasped the air, Staggered, and strove to stand.He bent them back with spear and spade, With desperate dyke and wall, With foemen leaning on his shieldAnd roaring on him when he reeled;And no help came at all.He broke them with a broken swordA little towards the sea, And for one hour of panting peace, Ringed with a roar that would not cease, With golden crown and girded fleeceMade laws under a tree. The Northmen came about our landA Christless chivalry: Who knew not of the arch or pen, Great, beautiful half-witted menFrom the sunrise and the sea.Misshapen ships stood on the deepFull of strange gold and fire, And hairy men, as huge as sinWith horned heads, came wading inThrough the long, low sea-mire.Our towns were shaken of tall kingsWith scarlet beards We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it

A unique collection of 10 of the best of Chesterton''s famous Fr. Brown mysteries, this book''s focus is on the stories that emphasize the role of Brown''s Catholic faith in helping solve the murders. This is a special deluxe edition.

So it was, certainly, with the Bastille. The destruction of the Bastille was not a reform; it was something more important than a reform. It was an iconoclasm; it was the breaking of a stone image. The people saw the building like a giant looking at them with a score of eyes, and they struck at it as at a carved fact. For of all the shapes in which that immense illusion called materialism can terrify the soul, perhaps the most oppressive are big buildings. Man feels like a fly, an accident, in the thing he has himself made. It requires a violent effort of the spirit to remember that man made this confounding thing and man could unmake it.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG (29 May 1874 - 14 June 1936), better known as G. K. Chesterton, was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, lay theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic. Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox."Time magazine has observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories-first carefully turning them inside out." Chesterton is well known for his fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and for his reasoned apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, his "friendly enemy," said of him, "He was a man of colossal genius." Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin

This is the first edition of Chesterton''s masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday, that explicates and enriches the complete text with extensive footnotes, together with an introductory essay on the metaphysical meaning of Chesterton''s profound allegory. Gardner sees the novel''s anarchists as symbols of our God-given free will, and the mysterious Sunday as representing Nature, with its strange mixture of good and evil when considered as distinct from God, as a mask hiding the transcendental face of the creator. The book also includes a bibliography listing the novel''s many earlier editions and stage dramatizations, as well as numerous illustrations that further illuminate the text.

The Ball and the Cross is a novel by G. K. Chesterton. The title refers to a more worldly and rationalist worldview, represented by a ball or sphere, and the cross representing Christianity. The first chapters of the book were serialized from 1905 to 1906 with the completed work published in 1909. The novel''s beginning involves debates about rationalism and religion between a Professor Lucifer and a monk named Michael. A part of this section was quoted in Pope John Paul I''s Illustrissimi letter to G. K. Chesterton. Much of the rest of the book concerns the dueling, figurative and somewhat more literal, of a Jacobite Catholic named Maclan and an atheist Socialist named Turnbull

Includes two essays by Chesterton, "The true romance" and "If Don John of Austria had married Mary, Queen of Scots."

The Man Who Knew Too Much and other stories (1922) is a book of detective stories by English writer G. K. Chesterton, published in 1922 by Cassell and Company in the United Kingdom, and Harper Brothers in the United States.[1][2][3][4] The book contains eight connected short stories about "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and additional unconnected stories featuring separate heroes/detectives. The United States edition contained one of these additional stories: "The Trees of Pride", while the United Kingdom edition contained "Trees of Pride" and three more, shorter stories: "The Garden of Smoke", "The Five of Swords" and "The Tower of Treason".

Light-hearted work introduces Innocent Smith, a bubbly, eccentric gentleman of questionable character, into the lives of a group of young disillusioned people -- and the result is inspired, high-spirited nonsense.

Short stories about the priest''s solution of baffling mysteries are accompanied by background and textual notes.