The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

Here is a special two-in-one book that is both by G.K. Chesterton and about Chesterton. This volume offers an irresistible opportunity to see who this remarkable man really was. Chesterton was one of the most stimulating and well-loved writers of the 20th century. His 100 books, and hundreds of essays and columns on a great variety of themes have made G.K. Chesterton the most widely quoted writers of modern times.

Here is Chesterton in his own words, in a book he preferred not to write, but did so near the end of his life after much insistence by friends and admirers. Critic Sydney Dark wrote after Chesterton died that “perhaps the happiest thing that happened in Gilbert Chesterton’s extraordinarily happy life was that his autobiography was finished a few weeks before his death. It is a stimulating, exciting, tremendously interesting book. It is a draught?indeed, several draughts one after the other?of human and literary champagne.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I. Hearsay Evidence
Chapter II. The Man with the Golden Key
Chapter III. How to Be a Dunce
Chapter IV. How to Be a Lunatic
Chapter V. Nationalism and Notting Hill
Chapter VI. The Fantastic Suburb
Chapter VII. The Crime of Orthodoxy
Chapter VIII. Figures in Fleet Street
Chapter IX. The Case against Corruption
Chapter X. Friendship and Foolery
Chapter XI. The Shadow of the Sword
Chapter XII. Some Political Celebrities
Chapter XIII. Some Literary Celebrities
Chapter XIV. Portrait of a Friend
Chapter XV. The Incomplete Traveller
Chapter XVI. The God with the Golden Keyhe was to marry in 1911, and in the book, Montgomery has the characters give mock-sermons that ridiculed the speaking styles of Presbyterian ministers. Montgomery knew when she wed Macdonald that she would leave Prince Edward Island for Ontario, and at the time she started writing the book in the summer of 1909 was overcome with nostalgia for her teenage years. Montgomery drew upon her diaries of her life to teenager as inspiration for the novel.