Chesterton, Gilbert Keith

Chesterton was born on May 29, 1874 in Kensington, London. He received his primary education at St. Paul's School . Then he studied fine art at the Slade School of Art to become an illustrator , also attended literary courses at University College London , but did not complete his studies. In 1896, Chesterton began working at London-based Redway and T. Fisher Unwin , where he remained until 1902. During this period, he also performed his first journalistic work as a freelancer and literary critic. In 1901, Chesterton married Francis Blog, with whom he lived his whole life.

In 1902, he was entrusted with conducting a weekly column in the Daily News newspaper, then in 1905 Chesterton began conducting a column in The Illustrated London News , which he led for 30 years.

According to Chesterton, as a young man, he became interested in occultism and, together with his brother Cecil, once experimented with a blackboard for spiritualistic sessions ^[8] . However, he soon became disillusioned with such occupations, converted to Christianity , and later became a Catholic ^[9] . Christian faith has left a deep imprint on all his works.

Chesterton early showed great interest and talent for art . He planned to become an artist, and his writing vision shows the ability to transform abstract ideas into concrete and catchy images. Even in his fiction parables are cautiously hidden.

Chesterton was a big man, his height was 1 meter 93 centimeters, and he weighed about 130 kilograms. He often joked about his size. During World War I, a girl in London asked him why he was not “far on the front lines”; Chesterton replied: “If you go from the side, you will see that I’m quite there” ^[10] . In another case, he told his friend Bernard Shaw: “If someone looks at you, he will think that there was a famine in England.” The show replied: "And if they look at you, they will think that you arranged it."

One day, with a very loud noise, Pale Granville Woodhouse said:

Chesterton often forgot where he had to go, it happened that he missed the trains on which he had to go. Several times he wrote telegrams to his wife, Francis Blog, not from the place where he was supposed to be, with this content: “I'm on Market Harborough . Where should I be? ” To which she replied to him: “At home” ^[12] . In connection with these cases and the fact that Chesterton was very awkward in childhood, some people believe that he had developmental dyspraxia ^[13] .

Chesterton loved the debate , so often participated in friendly public disputes with Bernard Shaw , Herbert Wells , Bertrand Russell , Clarence Darrow . According to his autobiography, he and Bernard Shaw played cowboys in a silent movie that was never released. Chesterton's great friend was Healer Bellock , with whom he also argued a lot. Gilbert Kit also met with the famous Russian poet Nikolai Gumilyov during his stay in London .

In 1914-1915, Chesterton suffered a serious illness, and in 1918 his brother Cecil, who participated in the First World War , died in France . The following year, the writer traveled to Palestine ; at the beginning of 1921 he went to America to give lectures.

In the last years of his life, Chesterton, despite his poor health, continued to work, including on the newspaper he had inherited from his brother, and traveled to Italy and Poland ; at the same time he began to speak on the radio.

Chesterton passed away on June 14, 1936 in Beaconsfield ( Buckinghamshire ), where he lived with his wife and adopted daughter. The memorial service was led by the Archbishop of Westminster . A sermon at a memorial service at Westminster Cathedral , held on June 27, was read by Ronald Knox . Chesterton is buried at the Beaconsfield Catholic Cemetery.

In all, Chesterton wrote about eighty books. He wrote several hundred poems, two hundred stories, four thousand essays, a number of plays, the novels “The Man Who Was Thursday ,” “The Ball and the Cross ,” “The Migratory Tavern, ” and others.

It is widely known for its cycles of detective stories with the main characters priest Brown and Horn Fisher , as well as religious and philosophical treatises on the history and apology of Christianity.

• Robert Browning (1903),
• Charles Dickens (1906)
• Robert Louis Stevenson (1927)
• Chaucer ( Chaucer , 1932).
• St. Francis of Assisi (1923)
• St. Thomas Aquinas ( St. Thomas Aquinas , 1933)
• What happened to the world? ( What's Wrong with the World , 1910)
• Outlines of Common Sense ( The Outline of Sanity , 1926)
• Napoleon of Nottinghill ( The Napoleon of Notting Hill , 1904)
• The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
• George Bernard Shaw (1909) ^[15]
• Eternal Man ( The Everlasting Man , 1925) ^[16]
• Orthodox ( Orthodoxy , 1909) ^[17]
• Here it is ( The Thing , 1929).
• Amazing Crafts Club ( The Club of Queer Trades , 1905)
• Alive Man ( Manalive , 1912)
• Migration tavern ( The Flying Inn , 1914)
• The Five of Swords / The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922)
• Three Instruments of Death ( The Innocence of Father Brown , 1911)
• The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond ( The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond , 1936)
• Fairy tales for children

• Texts by K. K. Chesterton on the site Chesterton.ru
• G.K. Chesterton in the library of Maxim Moshkov
• Three stories about patron Brown in per. Anatoly Kudryavitsky
• Chesterton in the library of A. Belousenko
• most Chesterton texts in the original
• The american chesterton society
• Gilbert! the Magazine of GK Chesterton
• Gilbert Keith Chesterton on the website of the magazine "Session"
• Chesterton's works on the site Lib.ru: Classics
• Electronic and audio books of Chesterton on the website Predania.ru
• Chesterton, Gilbert Keith on the Fantasy Lab website