The Everyman Chesterton

The first one-volume reader of the best of G. K. Chesterton’s writing in the full range of genres he mastered.

Chesterton was a towering literary figure of the early twentieth century, accomplished and prolific in many literary forms. A forceful proponent of Christianity and a critic of both conservatism and liberalism, he set out to describe nothing less than the spiritual journey of humanity in Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, his most enduring books. He is famous as well for his beloved Father Brown detective stories, his satirical and comic verse, his profoundly witty paradoxes and aphorisms, and his penetrating studies of such figures as Charles Dickens, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Thomas Aquinas. The Everyman Chesterton contains samples of his poems, stories, essays, and biographies, as well as the influential works of religious, political, and social thought in which he championed the common man and for which he is most admired.

Table of Contents:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Hearsay Evidence

The Man with the Golden Key

CHARLES DICKENS

The Dickens Period

The Boyhood of Dickens

The Youth of Dickens

The Pickwick Papers

The Great Popularity

Dickens and America

Dickens and Christmas

The Time of Transition

Later Life and Works

The Great Dickens Characters

On the Alleged Optimism of Dickens

A Note on the Future of Dickens

THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE

The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies

The Great Victorian Novelists

The Great Victorian Poets

ORTHODOXY

Introduction in Defence of Everything Else

The Maniac

The Suicide of Thought

The Ethics of Elfland

The Flag of the World

The Paradoxes of Christianity

The Eternal Revolution

The Romance of Orthodoxy

Authority and the Adventurer

THE EVERLASTING MAN

Introduction: The Plan of This Book

The Riddles of the Gospel

The Strangest Story in the World

The Witness of the Heretics

The Escape from Paganism

The Five Deaths of the Faith

Conclusion: The Summary of This Book

ST THOMAS AQUINAS

On Two Friars

The Aristotelian Revolution

A Meditation on the Manichees

The Approach to Thomism

The Permanent Philosophy

The Sequel to St Thomas

FATHER BROWN STORIES

The Blue Cross

The Queer Feet

The Wrong Shape

The Resurrection of Father Brown

The Miracle of Moon Crescent

The Dagger with Wings

The Doom of the Darnaways

The Song of the Flying Fish

The Red Moon of Meru

The Chief Mourner of Marne

The Scandal of Father Brown

The Quick One

The Blast of the Book

The Green Man

The Crime of the Communist

The Vampire of the Village

POEMS

Wine and Water

Antichrist, or the Reunion of Christendom: An Ode

Elegy in a Country Churchyard

Lepanto

The Secret People

The Rolling English Road

The Donkey