G. K. Chesterton Books

The title is a little deceptive. In fact, this book is mostly about Chaucer and his era, 220 pages worth. Stevenson gets a fair shake at 106 pages. But Carlyle gets only 12 pages, and Tolstoy only four, and those a rather simplistic critique of his philosophy. So only buy the book if you're interested in the former two writers.

As in most of Chesterton's biographies, the story of the subject's life is of minor interest here, compared to a philosophical and artistic description of the subject's works in the context of his time and "modern times." Chesterton is interested in the writer as a thinker, as a creator, and as a moral agent. In defending Stevenson and Chaucer, he argues for his view of Christianity, poetry, love, and artistic humility. If you want his religious views in a purer form, go to the brilliant Orthodoxy or Everlasting Man. If you want a detailed narration of the lives of the writers in question, look elsewhere. And even for this style of biography, I think his book on Dickens was the best I've read. But I found his opinionated description and defense of Chaucer and his times also very interesting. And while he does not scatter brilliant sayings like rose petals at a wedding, as in his best books, (reading Everlasting Man, I wanted to copy every other sentence) a few blossoms do flutter down, like the following, which also explain Chesterton's method:

"The truly impartial historian is not he who is enthusiastic for neither side in a historical struggle. . .The truly impartial historian is he who is enthusiastic for both sides. He holds in his heart a hundred fanaticisms."

"The greatest poets of the world have a certain serenity, because they have not bothered to invent a small philosophy, but have rather inherited a large philosophy. It is, nine times out of ten, a philosophy which very great men share with very ordinary men. It is therefore not a theory which attracts attention as a theory."

Author, Jesus and the Religions of Man (July 2000)

d.marshall@sun.ac.jp

G.K. Chesterton, best known for his Father Brown detective stories, also stands out as a remarkable literary critic. He is most astute on Stevenson, his greatest influence, rightly seeing him as the first great writer to find beauty in a modern city. A must!

The 'Preface' by Auberon Waugh tells about Chesterton's personality and habits. GKC had sympathy of the people and against the rich rulers (p.viii). His `Father Brown' stories were popular on both sides of the Atlantic (p.x). Chesterton was known for his love of paradoxes, "truth standing on its head to get attention". The `Foreword' by R.T. Bond tells how Chesterton invented the character of Father Brown after a discussion with a curate, who told him about practices unimaginable to Chesterton. Later he heard college students wonder what a curate could know about real life. Chesterton's detective would be ordinary appearing, even dull, individual. Yet he would figure out a mystery that seemingly wiser men could not fathom. Instead of analyzing clues, Father Brown tried to get inside the mind of the murderer to determine his motive and identity. [Today we would call that profiling.]

This book contains the five volumes of the Father Brown stories. `The Innocence of Father Brown' and `The Wisdom of Father Brown' both contain twelve stories. `The Incredulity of Father Brown' has eight stories. `The Secret of Father Brown' has ten stories. `The Scandal of Father Brown' has nine stories. These stories are always entertaining and amusing, even if some details are now as extinct as a horse and buggy, or may seem improbable.

This book is great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't like the Penguin one because it is missing 2 stories.

This book a compendium of papers presented at a college campus in Seattle in which the works and achievement of G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis were celebrated. Interesting reading for Lewis and Chesterton fans.

A nice collection of 17 essays by lovers of Lewis and G.K.C. Topics are arranged into five catagories. 1)Riddling Remembrances from those who knew them. 2)Spelling the riddle: Literary Assessments. 3)Living the Riddle: Their Social thought. 4)Proclaiming hte Riddle: Their social thought 5)Pursuing the Riddle of Joy.

I read this for the Lewis articles and was not disappointed at all. Very much worth the read! I liked Peter Kreeft's essay on Lewis' argument for god's existence from the innate desire within us. We are thirsty since water exists, we are hungry becasue food exists, we yearn for God because God exists. Intersting.

You may also enjoy "Permanent Things" edited by Tadie, which is a similar collection of essays on Christian literati.

This collection of Chesterton essays is quite extensive. It compiles many hard to find works in one volume, and therefore is worth having if you like Chesterton and want to sample a variety of his writings. The reason my review lacks five stars is because for one, the introductory essay has some biographical facts wrong, and secondly, there is no bibliography, source notes, or index. Chesterton himself always rates five stars, of course!

What an absolute joy! Chesterton is among my favorite authors, and this collection of essays lived up to my expectations. Ranging from reflections on Shakespeare and "penny dreadfuls" to essays on losing a piece of chalk and the Book of Job, these articles have a lot to offer by way of lessons on life, literature, theology, and philosophy.

Chesterton is often called "the apostle of common sense" and this collection underscores that moniker well. His particular take on life is a result of his incisive wit and broad-ranging observation of human nature. Combine that with his deep commitment to Christianity and his almost super-human way with the English language, and you have a volume that will be valuable for many years to come. One of my favorite moments in the anthology is an essay that begins with a stroll through the countryside to sit on a hill and draw. It turns into an expression of the full-blooded nature of Christian virtue as Chesterton reflects on missing his white chalk.

There are moments when the reader would need a deeper understanding of English culture 100 years ago than I have for some of the essays to have their full force, but I hope that is not a deterant. There is much in the volume of worth to us all.

NB: This review is lifted from an essay I wrote in 2001, "Euphemisms Mislead, Bluntness Needed."

GKC writes that the main weakness of modern urban society (remember, he was writing in the 1920s, and must have thought that farmers and rustic folks were not too far gone at the time) is the "great delusion of the prior claim of printed matter" on the mind, a delusion so strong it could contradict experience. He writes: "The chief mark of modern man has been that he has gone through the landscape with his eyes glued to a guidebook, and could actually deny in the one anything he could not find in the other" and continues a bit later, "By a weird mesmerism, what people read has a sort of magic power over their sight. It lays a spell on their eyes, so that they see what they expect to see. They do not see the most solid and striking things that contradict what they expect to see. They believe their schoolmasters too well to believe their eyes. Cobbett was a man without these magic spectacles. He did not see what he expected to see, but what he saw."

Let's apply this lesson to the typical journalistic reaction to the opening of the Spring School Shooting Season: They bleat that we need more gun control, more metal detectors, and more pats-down upon school arrival. This is what they read from each other. Somehow, it makes sense to them. Cobbett would see the obvious: A school child intent on murdering some fellow students and maybe a teacher or two might just start off by shooting Officer Friendly who is staffing the metal detector.

Chesterton recalls Cobbett on the subject of the fear of Napoleon: "Nothing was ever better in its way than the dramatic derision with which he [Cobbett] pointed at the canal at Hythe, and told the people that this was meant to keep out the French armies that had just crossed the Rhine and the Danube."

Now back to the question of language for us who try to communicate to friends and family the need for Honest Education. Should we be blunt or nuanced? Chesterton helps us by contrasting truth and style and giving a memorable example:

"Veracity has nothing to do with violence, one way or the other. One historian may prefer to say, 'The Emperor Nero set on foot several conspiracies against the life of Agrippina his mother, and expressed satisfaction when the final attempt was successful.' Another may say, 'The bloody and treacherous tyrant foully murdered his own mother, and fiendishly exulted in the detestable deed.' But the second statement records the same fact as the first, and records it equally correctly. The violent man is telling the truth quite as logically and precisely as the more dignified man. It is a question of what we consider a superiority of literary form; not of any sort of superiority in history fact."

Now at this point, I was resolving to be more blunt in my rhetoric. The phrase "Public Schools are a Public Menace" was suggested to me by an advisor just days before and I resolved to use it often.

Ah, but I got a bit of a shock a few pages later. My hero Chesterton writes, "It is possible to speak much too plainly to be understood." Uh-oh. Now what?

He continues, "In a confused and complicated age, men are used to long words and cannot understand short ones. The world, in the sense of the ordinary political and literary world, could not understand Cobbett because he was not obscure enough. He did not soothe them with those formless but familiar obscurities which they expected as the proper prelude to any political suggestion. He came to the point too quickly; and it deafened them like an explosion and blinded them like a flash of lightning. People of this political and literary sort understood much better the speakers they were used to; or liked much better the speakers they did not understand. The pompous and polysyllabic felicities of the diction of Pitt seemed to them comforting if not comprehensible."

Wow. I had to read it twice, no, three times. My own literacy is so weak that I don't do long sentences too good. But I got the point. We have no Pitt, but we do have a Bush whose edu-diction includes this odd name for his Please-Trust-Me-Again-Charlie-Brown Education Program, "No Child Will Be Left Behind."

Think about it. No child will be left behind in singing. No child will be left behind in math. No child will be left behind in football. Track. Swimming. Poetry. Dance. English grammar. Spanish vocabulary. Latin conjugations. Geography. History.

Wait a minute! If I were a kid today, and no child is going to be left behind, we're gonna have pretty low music standards so I can keep up and not be left behind. After all, in my school in the fourth grade all boys were required to join the boys' choir. Except you know who. I was excluded from boys' choir, and not because of behavior or attitude or anything like that. I can still remember the lonely hour at 11am on Thursdays when I sat in the classroom alone, reading Freddy the Pig, not Chesterton.

Under the Bush Plan, I'd be in there with 60 other boys, but we'd be reduced to humming along with Mitch. The only way to leave no child behind is to have everybody stand still. Can't work. But sweet words trigger our hopes that this time the politicians will actually do what they say. But our own abilities to reason were underdeveloped and distorted when we were young by.......be appalled at his lack of sense, and the lack of sense of all who are applauding him.

Back to the main point, how to explain why it's a good idea to free the schools from politics. My experience with mainstream educators has been that the vast majority must think that I "get to the point too quickly." Attending their conferences, it is clear that they much prefer the felicities of mainstream edubabble because it is somehow "comforting if not comprehensible."

The same is true for a like high proportion of journalists and pundits.

On the other hand, most - way over half - of the regular folks find that I make sense right from the get-go. My fairly large sample (200-300) is drawn from people who have by chance sat next to me on a plane, train, or bus over the last seven years.

Back to my question, "How blunt should we be?" Well, if we're trying to attract today's educational and literary leaders, not very blunt. Because they have no basis to refute our allegations, to be effective in their attack they must stoop to the ad hominem that we're not very nice people. They flick their "ist-spinner" like a children's game and accuse us of being racist, sexist, elitist, misogynist, pollutionist, monarchist, or even this- or that-phobic. Our bluntness just makes them angry.

But more and more I am thinking the Glittery Litery are not our market. Somebody has to be last to learn that freedom works. We'll just have to leave some pundits behind. (Imagine the slogan, "No Pundit Left Behind."

I think our market is the regular Joe and Kristin.

For instance, imagine the proud parents of a "public school" Kindergarten child. One day he came home using the m-f epithet, and not for Milton Friedman or Marshall Fritz. He learned it on the playground. His schoolmates watch South Park and are taken to R-movies. Joe and Kristin don't want to be THAT multi-cultural.

If our market is Everyman and not the Glittery Litery, the guy reading Popular Mechanix, not Atlantic Monthly, maybe we should be real blunt. When Joe hears the phrase, "public schools are a public menace," he's likely to think, "Huhhhh! That's a new idea. Makes sense, too. I hated school."

If we use euphemism, the Glittery Litery will silently appreciate our linguistic cuteness and still reject our ideas.

If we use euphemism, Joe won't get the point.

When some educator says he's not undermining the virtues that Joe values, and you've caught the educator red-handed doing just that, I think you need to say that he's lying. He'll be furious, sure, and kick up a fuss. But Joe and the other parents who overhear you will get the point. Indeed, they'll get alarmed, too.

If you use the euphemism that the educator "seems discomfited by veracity," the liar will still fight you, but you'll have no allies. Your euphemism will have deceived Joe into thinking there is no cause for alarm.

That's why in "Ode to Billie Joe," Bobbie Gentry didn't sing that he "attempted to levitate in proximity to the Tallahatchie Bridge."

First a comment about the text--somewhat hard to read because of the type style and narrow margins.

I read this because Chesterton is about my favorite non-fiction writer, and because Cobbett's history of the Reformation is tremendous both in its provocative style and myth shattering content.

Chesterton approaches his subject with his usual humor and honesty. Cobbett's whole life, GK says, "was a resistance to the degradation of the poor..." Cobbett's books and pamphlets attacking social injustice were scathing and personal. They also contained a great deal of truth. Because of his style and mercurial personality, many in his day dismissed him as a crank. However, by Chesterton's day, Cobbett's insight had become rather obvious: aristocrats driven by greed had indeed shattered the Christian stability of English society; and then more recently capitalism had finished the job of making a complete wreck of the English lower classes. Chesterton skillfully shows how the experiences of Cobbett's life, with his yeoman roots, influenced his almost unique (at the time) vision of England. Cobbett, GK says, was a rare individual who could see before he was able to read; in other words, he saw for himself the clues to England's past--the majestic gothic arches, the churches too large for the villages--and found later that what he had seen did not square with the accepted historical explanations.

GK gives us a great sense of Cobbett both as a fascinating personality and an historically crucial figure. All that in only 90 pages!

Mr. Hyde is a known murderer. Dr Jekyll is an honorable doctor in the scientific community. These people's lives should never cross, but why is Hyde the heir of Jekyll. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Luis Stevenson is set in Edinburgh, Scotland. The plot focuses on the duality of man and our capability to do both good and evil. The book does not take long to read and can probably be read in under 2 hours depending on your reading speed. This book is not hard to understand, it is written in prose. This book is not a murder fest and is probably better off for that. The book is written as a mystery. It would be better to compare it to a Hitchcock horror film than to Saw. I like it because it was a chance for me to read a classic, but not spend a month reading it. The plot was interesting and raised some interesting questions. All in all it is an interesting, but not time-consuming book.

Mr. Hyde is a known murderer. Dr. Jekyll is a honorable doctor in the scientific community. These people's lives should never cross, but why is Hyde the heir of Dr. Jekyll. This book by Robert Luis Stevenson "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", focuses on the duality of man and Jekyll's beleif that the evil in a man can be seperated from the good. This classic book can be read in as little as an hour and is a peice of literature that can surprise you in many ways. This book is not wriiten as poetry and as hard to read as The Odessy or Shakespeare. This book will make you think

A scientist invents a formula that can bring out man's dual nature. His opposite number, in this case, is somewhat of super-powered wanton, who does whatever he likes. Free of the social restraint of his other half, he happily commits any crime that comes to mind as he feels like it.

Eventually, investigators begin to suspect something, and a hunt is on for who is behind it.

This book was very interesting. It had its ups and downs and at time was hard to understand. I like the suspence and the mystery. For example I liked the part when out of no were Mr.Hyde lashed out and killed another man. I also liked the part were the lawyer went to go see Dr.Jekyll and there was a letter that the Doctor gave to the lawyer which was from Mr.Hyde the scary part was that there was no retern address and the door worker said that no one had hand delivered it. That is why i liked the book.

I thought this was a very challenging book, and it was hard to understand. I couldn't understand alot of the words since it is so old. But once you start understanding it, it really is a great story. Even though I already knew before I started reading it that they were the same person, I didn't know the rest of the story, and it was very interesting how Jekyll had written his will to Mr. Hyde. I like how he had the potion to stop and he was doing a good job, but then he finally gave in. I like this book, but it was challenging.

I'm only giving it three stars because I'm feeling curmudgeonly. It's his usual rapid-fire, turn-your-head-around thought, but it is not an easy introduction if you aren't already initiated into Chesterton's style.
Still. His insights (in the first chapter) about evolution are so entertaining and sensible that it's worth the price of the book, and if both evolutionists and creationists would read it, it could put some of the fruitless antagonism between them to rest. They miss the main point. Chesterton always seems to point to the main point. Even if his positions are odd, he has a level head.
If you're new to Chesterton, try ORTHODOXY first.

The printing in this book is the smallest I have ever seen - almost unreadable. Also the book has hundreds of spelling mistakes. It seems every word that should start with 'h' starts with 'b'. How can this occur in the age of spell-checkers? Chesterton deserves better. This printing is absolute garbage. The producers of this book should be ashamed of themselves.

Theologian G. K. Chesterton objectively and poetically takes us through a journey of the Christian church, allowing us to see it from afar; thus more clearly----from a different perspective----to think outside the box (as Christ had us do). He brings forth good arguments as he takes the other side in order to get his point across. It is hard to garner the magnificence this book is. The use of metaphors sails right over my head at times, and I am far and away from fully comprehending this work; I understand the need to read it carefully to get his meaning.

Chesterton discusses the mysticism that has so flourished since the beginning, ("but the first chapters of the romance have been torn out of the book; and we shall never read them") and paganism that leads to civilizations downfalls; every effort to confound God ends in disaster. But Christianity has toppled many times; it just shows how stable the foundation is.

And as for the creation/evolution debate: Chesterton sets out to prove "the rationalist thesis is more irrational than ours", and "Sometimes the professor with his bone becomes almost as dangerous as a dog with his bone. And the dog at least does not deduce theory from it, proving that mankind is going to the dogs----or that it came from them". Primitive doesn't mean mystic or unintelligent nor does civilized mean rational or intellectual; "very probable it was exceedingly like the history we do know, except in the one detail that we do not know it. It is thus the very opposite of the pretentious prehistoric history, which professes to trace everything in a consistent course from the amoeba to the anthropod and from the anthropod to the agnostic".

I do a disservice in trying to explain this difficult work; just read it.

Wish you well
Scott

The book has become classical because, unlike other weighty apologetical books, it appeals to common sense reasoning. As he always does in his other books, Chesterton again shows in this book that truth, and the way we're supposed to obtain that truth, is actually not far away from how common people think in their daily life about day-to-day matters. And a thought or argument--deep as it is--that returns to daily experience will tend to endure and last longer. Over speculative arguments will indeed make a boisterous noise, but it will soon be forgotten.

G.K.'s arguments look simple, and yet they appeal to sane mind. Why is it better off to believe in creation? G.K. would say: "isn't it easier to say that the world was created?" Why G.K. doesn't believe in evolution? Because human laughs. Why G.K. thinks that the story of Jesus in the Bible is true? Because no other groups of religion other than Christianity believes it is true. . . . To mention only few examples from the book.

ridete et valete!

I picked up this "Wilder" 2008 edition because I was interested in Chesterton. The writing does not disappoint, but this edition does. Replete with typos and no helpful commentary, there must be better editions out there.

G.K. Chesterton notes Saint Thomas Aquinas' philosophy to be one of "a central common sense that is nourished by the five senses" (p. 13). His "argument for Revelation is not an argument against Reason; but it is an argument for Revelation. The conclusion he draws from it is that men must receive the highest moral truths in a miraculous manner; or most men would not receive them at all" (p. 19).

St. Thomas' philosophy is deeply needed in today's world with its distorted thinking. For St. Thomas, "a man is not a man without his body, just as he is not a man without his soul" (p. 17). Indeed, "a Christian means a man who believes that deity or sanctity has attached to matter or entered the world of the senses" (p. 23). St. Thomas' philosophy is deeply optimisitic: "nobody will begin to understand the Thomist philosophy, or indeed the Catholic philosophy, who does not realize that the primary and fundamental part of it is entirely the praise of Life, the praise of Being, the praise of God as the Creator of the World" (p. 81).

By contrast, Manicheanistic thinking "is always a notion in one way or another that nature is evil; or that evil is at least rooted in nature....Sometimes it was a dualism, which made evil an equal partner with good; so that neither could be a usurper. More often it was a general idea that demons had made the material world, and if there were any good spirits, they were concerned only with the spiritual world" (p. 83). Chesteron tells us that "if we wanted to put in a picturesque and simplified form what he [St. Thomas] wanted for the world, and what was his work in history, apart from the theological and theoretical definitions, we might well say that it really was to strike a blow and settle the Manichees" (p. 79).

Early on, Chesterton notes that "the sixteenth century schism was really a belated revolt of the thirteenth century pessimists" (p. xvi). "Thomas Aquinas had struck his blow, but he had not entirely settled the Manichees" (p. 161). "It was the very life of the Thomist teaching that Reason can be trusted: it was the very life of the Lutheran teaching that Reason is utterly untrustworthy" (p. 14).

G. K. Chesterton is one of my favorite authors; "Orthodoxy" and "The Everlasting Man" are among the most thought-provoking books that I have ever read. Nevertheless, this biography of St. Thomas Aquinas was disappointing. Chesterton is, as usual, not lacking in wit, but his wit often overshadows the content. It is clear that Chesterton thinks very highly of Aquinas, but I often felt that much of his characterization was fanciful. His description of Aquinas didn't seem to contradict many of the facts that he presented, but neither did the facts justify his description. Also, the organization of the book was poor; it is topical not chronological, but its topics are not developed well enough to stand on their own. I cannot recommend this book because after reading it, my knowledge of Aquinas and his impact on philosophy, theology, and the church is still poor.

As is evident from other reviews, Chesterton is not everyone's cup of tea. He lived in a day when erudition was registered in extended prose that often lent itself to convolution. To a thinking man, nuance is everything and Chesterton is so intent upon the development of nuance that he may seem opaque to modern readers who do not have the background that he assumes in the reader.

Chesterton is very clear in his introduction. He assumes the reader is acquainted with the major players in his book. He expects us to have a passing familiarity with St. Francis of Assisi so that when Chesterton lumps Aquinas together with him that it is a somewhat surprising strategy. Chesterton assumes that the reader is somewhat aware that the mendicant orders were not revolutionary in that they were introducing new ideas but that their intent was to confront decadence with old ones. This is where Chesterton begins and then he adds his own subtlety to the confusion.

For all that, if you are willing to rise to Chesterton's challenge you will not fail to be edified. Thinking is and should be, often its own reward. A book should not just entertain us but advance us along the pathways of elevated humanity. Chesterton's optimism (of another age) was that such a thing was possible and in that he and Aquinas were of one accord. He may be a bit too easy on the "Dumb Ox" and too ready to paint him more favorably than he warranted in every particular, but Chesterton makes him real and what is more important, leads us to understand how this Medieval mind was really important.

I think that was Chesterton's intent and he does a pretty fair job of accomplishing it. If you find yourself getting confused by the prose let it prod you into doing some background reading before you move on. When you do, you will find the prose is not so confusing as it might first appear.

It's a good book.

A Chesterton biography seems to always leave one with the feeling that they are not sure if they learned more about the subject of the biography or about the author. Chesterton so readily relates to his subject that the thinking of both seems intertwined into one. Is it Thomas Aquinas or is it the master of paradox himself who is making us think as we read this biography? Chesterton admits that his work is merely a sketch of Saint Thomas and primarily as a sketch of his philosophy. And, with that, we are treated to a solid introduction to that philosophy in the context of Thomas' life. It is, therefore, not a raw description of dates and events in the life of a Dominican - it is instead a bold introduction to philosophy that impacts the church and the world even today.

Thomas Aquinas was more than the simple friar he had hoped to be, he was indeed a father of western civilization. It is impossible to understand Thomas without such an introduction to Thomism. G. K. Chesterton rightly made that observation and gave us perhaps the best biography (sketch or otherwise) to date on the "dumb ox" who's bellowing indeed filled the world and changed it forever.

GKC delivers what he promises: a sketch that may motivate readers to pick up deeper books on the subject. If you knew nothing about Thomas, chances are, you don't know awfully much more after this book, but you get an idea which way it may go.
I love Chesterton's writing, except where I disagree with him: I can't buy his basic Catholicism (he warns against that in the introduction!), his acceptance of the concept of the 'saint' and of miracles. That just does not match with his approach of 'common sense'.
What I like about him: he likes to challenge paradigms and bust myths. He does this with mighty language and drops plenty of colourful aphorisms. On the negative side: he does remain short on philosophical content (what is this Plato vs Aristotle match all about? should he not at least try to explain the outlines?), but he is a little long on '-isms' and nouns of all kind; he loves name-dropping. And he is a wee bit condescending towards the 'orient' and the 'Chinaman'. Puts me off a little.
One more in this direction: he is a little vague in some of his complaints, so I am not sure what he talks about when he mentions the 'age of uncommon reason' and praises the 'level-headed man' early on. It does sound like an anti-Einstein tirade and like the normal anti-scientist's ranting against the disappointing fact that modern science comes up with counter-intuitive hypotheses, more and more.
But I love his portrait of Thomas as a liberator of the intellect, the one who reconciled religion with reason. His statement that Thomas was the real reformer, those after him were reactionaries is surprising, but I am willing to keep the idea in mind. And he wins my sympathies completely with his comparison of Thomas and Hegel: Thomas was sane, while Hegel was mad. That needs to be said.

Having left Dickens until later in life, I just completed Barnaby Rudge as part of my attempt to go through his novels in chronological order, starting with Pickwick. Barnaby Rudge is a very different animal from the 4 prior novels, patterned after it was on the swashbuckling historical style of Scott. It's so different from Old Curiosity Shop, which he was writing at the same time as Barnaby Rudge, that it's hard to believe it's the work of the same author, except for the quality of exceptionally vivid characterizations that pervade all the books.

I knew nothing of the historical events upon which the book is based, that, at the time of original publication, were well known to most Londoners, almost as well known as 9/11 is known by contemporary New Yorkers. Dickens seemed to have anticipated this problem, as the historical recreation is so beautifully folded into the melodrama that I never felt left behind. DON'T READ THE INTRODUCTION as too many plot points were given away and spoiled some of the dramatic impact for this reader. Save the introduction for afterward.

The characters are so memorable, it is painful to have to complete the book and say goodbye to them. Especially John Willet, and his double-chin, which almost deserves billing as a character in and of itself, Sir John Chester, a poetic achievement to whom Oscar Wilde and Shaw owed enormous debts, Maypole Hugh, and Grip the Raven (from whom Poe got his idea for the poem "The Raven), are high water marks of achievement.

While I preferred some of the intensely personal, experimental style of the latter half of Oliver Twist and much of Old Curiosity Shop, the confident and bold tone of the narration in Barnaby is a shot of adrenaline in every chapter, and the power of description in Dicken's cinematic viewpoint is incredibly powerful and pulse-poundingly entertaining, while the whole time maintaing a savvy, but never cynical outlook when it comes to the socio-political themes.

Don't miss it.

Barnaby Rudge is one of Charles Dickens' lesser known and read novels--and that's a pity. The book is interesting, full of the kind of characters that Dickens is noted for, and full of action and exciting scenes. More significantly, it is one of his most thought provoking works, with a relevance that is applicable to today's world. It will leave you cheering for the good guys and grateful to see that the bad guys (and gals) get what coming to them. The book is divided cleanly into two parts, the first taking place in 1775, depicts the comings and goings of four families and their assorted relations and friends. The second occurs five years later and focuses on an historical event, the riots which shook London to oppose rights for Catholics.

The book begins at the Maypole, an inn located just outside London and presided over by John Willet, a pompous know-it-all who intimidates his friends and dominates his son, Joe, to the point that he leaves to join the army by the end of this part. Hugh, an uneducated and violent man works for Willet handling animals. Down the road is the residence of Geoffrey Haredale, a country gentleman, and his niece Emma, a beautiful and gracious girl. Her father was mysteriously killed 22 years previously and the mystery runs through the book. Haredale is a Catholic and an antagonist to John Chester, an oily, Machiavellian, highly ambitious character. The only thing the two men have in common is their mutual desire to keep Chester's son Edward from a romance with Emma. In this they succeed and Edward, too, leaves at the end of part 1. The third household contains the Varden family. Gabriel, the father, is a locksmith kindly and a moderating influence throughout the book. Ultimately he plays a hero's role. His wife, Martha, constants nags him, aided and abetted by their servant, Miss Miggs, a comical character given to hysterics. Their daughter, Dolly, is beautiful and vivacious, but flirtatious and at this point does not return the love that Joe Willet shows for her. Simon Tappertit, an apprentice to Mr. Varden, also resides there. He is a ridiculous person with an exaggerated sense of himself and the clandestine leader of a group of similar apprentices with designs on engaging in violence against their masters. Finally there is the residence of the title character, Barnaby Rudge, who is a mentally deficient but happy and charming young man. He lives in genteel poverty with his mother. Mr. Rudge, who was the steward to the murdered Mr. Haredale, was also allegedly a victim. The cast of characters interacts in typical Dickens fashion for the first 33 (of 80) chapters.

The scene and mood shifts abruptly in the second part which gives a detailed and graphic account of the so-called "anti-popery" riots that took place in London in 1780. The reader would do well to read an independent account of these events before reading Dickens' version. The above cast of characters is joined in part two by an additional group including some from actual life (Lord George Gordon, the instigator of the riots and Ned Dennis, one of the ringleaders to name but two). The riots bring out the best and the worst of all the characters. Barnaby is conned into joining the rioters and ends up in prison condemned to be hanged, the Maypole Inn is sacked and John Willet, humiliated, bound and gagged, the Haredale residence is set ablaze and Emma and Dolly taken prisoner, many houses are burned, people killed, Newgate prison is broken into, destroyed and all the prisoners released. The riots end with a harrowing scene is which dozens of people are burned to death by flaming alcohol.

The execution scene, where three of the "ringleaders" are to be hanged is one of the most powerful parts of the book. Dickens gives a vivid account of the conditions and circus atmosphere that surrounds this event. In Hugh's powerful and eloquent speech Dickens also gives a condemnation of British society that creates such persons. Hugh at this point is the most moral person in the book and goes to his death with bravery and courage. This scene alone is well worth reading the book for.

In the end, of course, everything is sorted out, justice is delayed but not denied and we have a happy ending.

If the book can be said to suffer it is from the lack of a strong central character around whom the plot revolves. There is no real hero here or even a singular villain. Joe and Edward, either of whom might have filled the former role are largely absent from much of the book and only show up again after the riots have ended. Gabriel Varden comes closest to that role but is more acted upon than actor until the closing chapters. The most likely candidate for villain, John Chester, likewise disappears at the end of part one. Hugh, Simon and Dennis emerge as a trio of rouges joined by Gashford, secretary to Lord Gordon and a blind man who cries plaintively, why must I be good just because I am blind? The murderer, of course, is also lurking around. But none of these individuals stands apart from the rest and the hero versus villain theme is muted. The book is really about events and how these events shape and change the life of the characters for better or worse.

In the end you will find yourself thinking about Barnaby Rudge for days afterward and it will leave a mark on your life. Nothing more positive can be said about any book.

This is the last of all the Dickens's novels (including the five shorter Christmas Books) that I have either read or attempted. I had saved it until the last because it has not been held in very high esteem either by the critics or the reading public. I was pleasantly surprised.

Whereas there are several Dickens novels that I was unable to finish (namely, The Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, Little Dorrit, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and all the Christmas Books except A Christmas Carol), Barnaby Rudge never dragged even though it is one of Dickens's longer novels. Barnaby Rudge is as filled with memorable characters (especially the secondary ones - Miss Miggs, the Vardens, the Chesters, Hugh, Mr. Tapperttit, Dennis the hangman, etc.); places (the Maypole Inn, the locksmith's shop) and incident (the Gordon Riots) as any of his greater novels.

Stylistically, Barnaby Rudge is akin to Dickens's earlier picaresque novels (Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby). After those early successes of the 1830s, Dickens was struggling to find his mature style in my opinion. Most of the longer and shorter novels I was unable to finish come from the 1840s. (The Mystery of Edwin Drood is Dickens's last novel, but it was only half-finished at his death so it is really not fair to blame Dickens for my failure to respond to it.) Even though The Old Curiosity Shop comes between Nicholas Nickelby and Barnaby Rudge, Barnaby Rudge demonstrates all the strengths of Nicholas Nickelby and avoids the weaknesses of The Old Curiosity Shop. Barnaby Rudge is still early Dickens in my opinion.

G. K. Chesterton described a taste for early Dickens as similar to a taste for new potatoes as opposed to mature potatoes. Some people prefer new potatoes. Barnaby Rudge is not Dickens at his greatest. (I reserve that description for David Copperfield, Great Expectations and Bleak House. Along with the three novels of the 1830s already mentioned, I place Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities and Our Mutual Friend and now, Barnaby Rudge, on the second tier of Dickens's novels.) We must remember, that Dickens at his worst is better than most writers at their best. If Barnaby Rudge were a newly discovered work by an otherwise unknown author, or by one of Dickens's contemporaries, it would be hailed as a masterpiece. As it is, Barnaby Rudge is an eminently enjoyable and readable effort by a great writer.

This is a review of the BBC Radio dramatization version of this book.

The story is a good one, filled with politics of religion, sympathetic characters and Dicken's inimitable prose.

However, this audio version is WAY over produced, with blaring, overly-dramatic music that seemed reminiscent of the worst grade B silent films.

The actors screamed, ranted, raved and wept hysterically more than they spoke. Unless someone already knows the basic plot and characters, they may have difficulty following the action (particularly, as a previous reviewer pointed out, the thick accents will be hard for Americans to decipher.).

The entire production needed to be toned down quite a bit for Dicken's voice to be heard above the clamor.

It might be better to read the book in this case.

Barnaby Rudge (1841)originally appeared as a weekly serial in Dickens'
weekly newspaper Master Humphrey's Clock. The novel is the most obscure work by the master. The story is well worth reading. It is an exciting story of the Anti-Roman Catholic riots of 1780 led by the eccentric George Gordon a member of Parliament. The second half of the book focuses on the riots in a cinematic depiction of the mobs who ran amok in London during a hot summer of hatred, prejudice and murder.
Character rather than complicated Victorian plot is why we read Dickens. This book adds many memorable folks to the gallery of Dickens
characters. In this long novel we meet:
Barnaby Rudge-the title character is a feeble witted lad whose pet is the famed raven Grip. He lives with his mother. We later learn his evil father Rudge Sr. murdered Lord Haredale's brother. The father is hanged but Barnaby lives to spend time at the Maypole Inn. Years before Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" Dickens took a mentally ill person as his hero. Barnaby is pardoned for his participation in the Gordon riots.
Gabriel Varden, his shrewish wife and buxom daughter Dolly live in London where Mr. Varden is a locksmith. After Joe Willet leaves England to fight in the American Revolution he returns home to wed Dolly. A charming love story.
The Haredale family tells us of the love of Mr. Haredale's beautiful niece
Emma for Edward the son of John Chester. Chester is a Protestant and a sworn enemy of the Catholic Haredales.
Minor charactes such as Hugh (the illegitimate son of Chester); Dennis the hangman; Miss Miggs the man crazy maid to Mrs. Varden and others populate the pages of this fast paced tale of murder,mystery and intrigue.
Barnaby Rudge is a fine book which deserves to be better known. It is not Dickens best novel,his longest novel or his most famous novel. Yet it still appeals in its exciting look at the events of 1780. It and the much more famous Tale of Two Cities were the two historical novels the author produced.
YOu will never forget Grip the Raven (said to be the inspiration for Edgar Allen Poe's poem "The Raven") or Barnaby and his friends and enemies. Curl up with this good book and let your mind and heart wander back to the year of our Lord 1775 when the novel begins.
The book is well illustrated by George Cattermole and Hablot K. Browne
in charming art work.

The company asking $6.99 for this public domain book, widely available on the Web, is called BiblioBazaar.

Bizarre would better fit.

.99 is, perhaps, reasonable for a repackaged public domain book, though really Kindle users should just find unencrypted Mobipocket files and load them using the USB to their Kindle.

In the meantime, caveat emptor!

Just begain reading "Heretics." I wish I had found this book, and Chesterton, 30 years ago when I was 20 instead of now when I am 50.

Ideas and actions can take decades sometimes a century or more to "bloom."

During 1905, Chesterton identifies errors that have bloomed and guide/justify our day's thinking & action -- runious errors.

Can't wait to finish.

Should be required reading.

Chesterton is always a joy to read. Precise, poetic, inspired prose and a razor-sharp mind.

A fantastic book by a great writer, highly recommend it for anyone interested in Apologetics, or just fun argument should definitely read it. While this review will hardly do justice to him, Chesterton is amazingly complex, and while sometimes incorrect, offensive, or fallacious, he is always intelligent, witty, and generally has an opinion very much worth listening to. Highly recommended.

G.K. Chesterton wrote HERETICS c. 1905. Yet this book is still timely in that popular gurus change opinions and social theories very quickly never realizing how dated the newest fad becomes. Chesterton had the rare ability in exposing many new fads as actually some varient of some ideas that were in vogue during Ancient History.

Chesterton never engages in ad hominem arguments. He is careful to metion the merits of those with whom he disagrees. Chesteron focuses on the logical fallacies of his critics and never engages in bitterness or smear tactics.

Readers should carefully read Chesterton's cirticisms of G.B. Shaw. Chesterton asserts the validity of Shaw's Socialism. Chesterton does not argue with Shaw's socialist views per se. He does critisize Shaw's tendenacy toward a mechanical view of society and politics. One should note that in spite of their repeated debates and crticisms of each others' work, Chesterton and Shaw remained life long friends.

Chesterton has some interesting comments on political power. Chesteron was probably not a democrat, and his views beginning on page 168 are note worthy. Chesterton remarks condemns those who pick a Caesar. He remarks that people falsely look favorably on such an individual because he, the Strong Man or the Caesar, is not an ordinary man. In other words, men may domocratically opt for someone whom ordinary think is better. This is a form despotism or slavery where the ruler has the sanctions of the victim. Other rulers hold position by heredity right whereby men accept this notion only because of the social order rather than false praise or respect for someone who may be evil and take advantage of men's sychophantic blind obedience to self appointed knaves.

Chesterton has good insight regarding the abuse of language and different rules for social classes. If some poor soul is arrested for stealing, he/she is accused of theft. If some who is wealthy is arrested for the same crime, the comment is that the wealthy person has an illness called kleptomania. To paraphrase Chesterton, the wealthy want to make laws ( or in their case excuses)while decent people want to obey the law and expect everyone to do the same.

G.K. Chesterton writes well and uses reason as his guide. He did not get angry when his critics attacked him for his personal appearance. He was a large man. Chesterton could laugh at himself. However, he got angry when men attacted honesty and truth. Chesterton was a champion of himself or his work. He was a champion of reason, truth, and honesty. Whether one disagrees with him, Chesterton is well worth reading for his prose, knowledge, and logic.