Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a man who thought in paradoxes and wrote in miracles. To meet him on the page is to encounter a thinker who could make you laugh at the abyss and then suddenly, quietly, break your heart with a question about God. This biography, written by his friend and publisher Maisie Ward and published just six years after his death in 1942, draws on intimate correspondence and conversations with those who knew him best to resurrect not just the facts of a remarkable life but the living presence of the man himself. Here is Chesterton as a boy, as a young writer finding his voice, as the convert whose intellectual journey toward Rome shaped everything that followed. Here too are the friendships, the travels, the lectures, the legendary wit that could fill a room like light. Ward gives us the full sweep: Father Brown, the journalism, the theological battles, the enormous appetite for life that made GKC irresistible to friends and formidable to foes. Reading this book, you understand why Andrew Greeley read it at sixteen and remained a Chestertonian for life. It doesn't just tell you about a writer. It introduces you to one.