15 Comments

Thanks for this—never realized what a fascinating fellow he was. Have always loved The Man Who Was Thursday. Indelible for me.

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That was the first of his books I ever read! I read it in college, mostly waiting in the halls between classes. I’ve read it a few times since then and feel certain saying I’ll read it again.

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After reading "Orthodoxy" I flipped back through the pages and realized I had underlined almost every sentence in the book. I had to say to myself: "why did I even bother!?"

That's Chesterton.

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So true. He had a gift.

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As an admirer of GKC, I appreciate anyone trying to bring order to his chaotic bibliography. He wrote in practically every literary and non-fiction form and genre and, trying to track down and read all of them is a full lifetime's work. And he was only 62 when he died, so he could have done more!

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It’s wild. I’ve read several of his books and a bunch of his essays—and I’ve only really scratched the surface.

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I have really benefited through the years using Sprug. I am now just two volumes away from having early editions of all Chesterton's books. The two I don't have are exceedingly rare--and I've only ever seen one of them for sale, and that at a ridiculous price.

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Two volumes away! Holy cow, that’s incredible! I’ve really loved reading Chesterton’s essays over the years. Something delectable in pretty much every one.

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For a first-time GKC reader, what do you suggest?

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Trevin Wax has some good suggestions at the bottom of this post: https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/beyond-chestertons-fence

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I have the Delphi collection of the 'complete works' of G.K Chesterton on my ereader. It has over a hundred book titles - about a third of them are essay collections - plus nearly 50 'uncollected' essays, and I have identified a few short stories that are not in the collection.

The real challenge with Chesterton is finding good hard copies of his works. I finally found a used hardcover of 'Orthodoxy' last year.

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I agree. There’s so much in public domain these days there’s a lot of shoddy copies out there.

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I read Orthodoxy a few years ago and loved it. We’re reading the essay, A Piece of Chalk, from his collection of things found in his pockets. His writings would make good gifts for literary friends and family.

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Absolutely. I think I’ve enjoyed his essays most of all.

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Dear Mr. Cornett, thank you for mentioning my Chesterton bibliography! However, it is not true that it is somewhat incomplete, as the Strand Magazine essay appeared this year, that is after publication of the first and second edition of the bibliography. I don't expect anyone to think that I should be able to look into the future. However, I knew about the essay, I have copies of the manuscript with revisions by GKC's hand, and I investigated it some years ago when I tried to establish whether the Detection Club Magazine had ever been launched. It was not possible to find that magazine anywhere, and the Detection Club had no clue about it, so we had to conclude that it had not been published at all, and the essay was described as such in a sub-chapter of unpublished pieces within the bibliography. This sub-chapter described the unpublished manuscripts in the British Library collection, of which I was able to find all but two not published. A librarian at Cambridge U.L. managed to find proof that the other essay/article had been rejected. If interested, I can send you some material on the bibliography - which the antiquarian Aidan Mackey said made other bibliographies look puny. I have received a lot of praise for it, and the second edition is nearly sold out.

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