G K C As M C

This collection of thirty-seven essays by G. K. Chesterton was first collected in 1929 and constitutes the cream of introductions and prefaces he had contributed by that date. Some of them, such as his startling essay on Job, are well known, but most of them have not seen the light of day since this volume drifted into obscurity. Some of these pieces are about people as well known as Matthew Arnold or Dr. Johnson, and the bulk of these are on literary figures; but others may veer on to such topics as Magna Carta or drinking songs. When Chesterton began writing for the Illustrated London News, his editors asked him not to write on religion or politics; he casually mentioned that there are no other subjects and quietly went about his business. These essays are like that. Each is fraught with one or the other topic--fraught because they are in danger of making us think.

In this book of essays, Father James V. Schall, a prolific author himself and a prominent Catholic writer, brings readers to Chesterton through a witty series of original reflections prompted by something Chesterton wrote--timely essays on timeless issues.

Restaging the Past is the first edited collection devoted to the study of historical pageants in Britain, ranging from their Edwardian origins to the present day. Across Britain in the twentieth century, people succumbed to ‘pageant fever’. Thousands dressed up in historical costumes and performed scenes from the history of the places where they lived, and hundreds of thousands more watched them. These pageants were one of the most significant aspects of popular engagement with the past between the 1900s and the 1970s: they took place in large cities, small towns and tiny villages, and engaged a whole range of different organised groups, including Women’s Institutes, political parties, schools, churches and youth organisations. Pageants were community events, bringing large numbers of people together in a shared celebration and performance of the past; they also involved many prominent novelists, professional historians and other writers, as well as featuring repeatedly in popular and highbrow literature. Although the pageant tradition has largely died out, it deserves to be acknowledged as a key aspect of community history during a period of great social and political change. Indeed, as this book shows, some traces of ‘pageant fever’ remain in evidence today.

This first book-length critical examination of the life and work of Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) reveals a major English writer whose prodigious output included stories of history, romance, and the supernatural. As Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda writes in his Foreword, Bowen may be "the finest British woman writer of the uncanny of the last century," a view that echoes the high regard of cultural historian Edward Wagenknecht, who called her "a literary phenomenon," one whose best work places her alongside such contemporaries as Edith Wharton and Daphne du Maurier. Publicly acclaimed--known only by a series of pseudonyms (including "Marjorie Bowen")--but privately inscrutable, she was and is a mysterious and complex character. Drawing for the first time upon archival resources and the cooperation of the Bowen Estate, this book reveals a woman who saw herself as a rationalist and serious historian, but also as a mystic and "dark enchantress of dread." Above all, through a lifetime of domestic storms and creative ecstasy, Bowen worked tirelessly as both a professional writer and a consummate artist, always seeking, as she once confessed, "to find beauty in dark places."

Fashion: An ideals that fails to satisfy. Water: A medicine. It should be taken in small quantities in very extreme cases; as when one is going to faint. Work: Doing what you do not like. This quirky, original compilation serves up the eccentric wit and thought-provoking aphorisms of one of the twentieth century's liveliest and most articulate minds. Assembled by the president of the American Chesterton Society, it features alphabetical entries of "Chesternitions"—pithy and poetic definitions of words in the spirit of Samuel Johnson. Great for casual browsing or cover-to-cover study, the volume includes more than two dozen of Chesterton's distinctive drawings.

G.K. Chesterton was a master essayist. But reading his essays is not just an exercise in studying a literary form at its finest, it is an encounter with timeless truths that jump off the page as fresh and powerful as the day they were written. The only problem with Chesterton's essays is that there are too many of them. Over five thousand! For most GKC readers it is not even possible to know where to start or how to begin to approach them. So three of the world's leading authorities on Chesterton - Dale Ahlquist, Joseph Pearce, Aidan Mackey - have joined together to select the "best" Chesterton essays, a collection that will be appreciated by both the newcomer and the seasoned student of this great 20th century man of letters. The variety of topics are astounding: barbarians, architects, mystics, ghosts, fireworks, rain, juries, gargoyles and much more. Plus a look at Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, George MacDonald, T.S. Eliot, and the Bible. All in that inimitable, formidable but always quotable style of GKC. Even more astounding than the variety is the continuity of Chesterton's thought that ties everything together. A veritable feast for the mind and heart. While some of the essays in this volume may be familiar, many of them are collected here for the first time, making their first appearance in over a century.

Through years of meticulous research and access to the literary estate of G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Pearce presents a major biography of a 20th century literary giant, providing a great deal of important information on GKC never before published. This is a thoroughly readable and delightful biography of a multi- faceted author, artist and debater who loved the friendship of children, idolized his wife and enjoyed great friendships with the likes of Hillaire Belloc, Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Illustrated.

"Gilbert Keith Chesterton has been the subject of several biographies, but none as comprehensive as The Outline of Sanity, A Biography of G. K. Chesterton by Alzina Stone Dale." -THE WALL STREET JOURNAL "A biography in which the imaginative and intellectual stature of the man is seen in its full measure." -SUNDAY TIMES (UK)