The Project Gutenberg EBook of Heretics, by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Title: Heretics

Author: Gilbert K. Chesterton

Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #470]
Release Date: March, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HERETICS ***

Produced by Mike Piff and Martin Ward. HTML version by Al Haines.

HERETICS

by

Gilbert K. Chesterton

"To My Father"

Source

Heretics was copyrighted in 1905 by the John Lane Company. This
electronic text is derived from the twelfth (1919) edition published by
the John Lane Company of New York City and printed by the Plimpton
Press of Norwood, Massachusetts. The text carefully follows that of
the published edition (including British spelling).

The Author

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London, England on the 29th of
May, 1874. Though he considered himself a mere "rollicking
journalist," he was actually a prolific and gifted writer in virtually
every area of literature. A man of strong opinions and enormously
talented at defending them, his exuberant personality nevertheless
allowed him to maintain warm friendships with people--such as George
Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells--with whom he vehemently disagreed.

Chesterton had no difficulty standing up for what he believed. He was
one of the few journalists to oppose the Boer War. His 1922 "Eugenics
and Other Evils" attacked what was at that time the most progressive of
all ideas, the idea that the human race could and should breed a
superior version of itself. In the Nazi experience, history
demonstrated the wisdom of his once "reactionary" views.

His poetry runs the gamut from the comic 1908 "On Running After One's
Hat" to dark and serious ballads. During the dark days of 1940, when
Britain stood virtually alone against the armed might of Nazi Germany,
these lines from his 1911 Ballad of the White Horse were often quoted:

I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

Though not written for a scholarly audience, his biographies of authors
and historical figures like C