G. K. Chesterton: A Biography - Hardcover

Ker, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199601283 ISBN 13: 9780199601288

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2011

Synopsis

G. K. Chesterton is remembered as a brilliant creator of nonsense and satirical verse, author of the Father Brown stories and the innovative novel, The Man who was Thursday, and yet today he is not counted among the major English novelists and poets. However, this major new biography argues that Chesterton should be seen as the successor of the great Victorian prose writers, Carlyle, Arnold, Ruskin, and above all Newman.

Chesterton's achievement as one of the great English literary critics has not hitherto been fully recognized, perhaps because his best literary criticism is of prose rather than poetry. Ian Ker remedies this neglect, paying particular attention to Chesterton's writings on the Victorians, especially Dickens. As a social and political thinker, Chesterton is contrasted here with contemporary intellectuals like Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells in his championing of democracy and the masses. Pre-eminently a controversialist, as revealed in his prolific journalistic output, he became a formidable apologist for Christianity and Catholicism, as well as a powerful satirist of anti-Catholicism.

This full-length life of G. K. Chesterton is the first comprehensive biography of both the man and the writer. It draws on many unpublished letters and papers to evoke Chesterton's joyful humour, his humility and affinity to the common man, and his love of the ordinary things of life.

About this title

Review:

Ian Kers magisterial new biographical of Chesterton will now do for Chesterton what his definitive biography of Newman did for hima major literary achievement. Nobody who has any interest in Chesterton can afford to be without Ian Kers book. (William Oddie, The Catholic Herald)

This masterly biographyhas the potential to help establish Chesterton in what Ker regards as his rightful place as a major English author. (Susan Elkin, The Independent on Sunday)

Ian Kers tremendous biography is an incitement to read Chesterton afresh[it] confirms him as a great thinker. (Christopher Howse, The Tablet)

A discriminating portrait that does welcome justice to the full richness of [Chestertons] hitherto undervalued work the need for a proper critical biography has long been acknowledged and Ker has supplied it for any true understanding of the scope of Chestertons achievement Kers biography will be indispensable. (Edward Short, The Weekly Standard)

A brilliant towering biography (Gary Day, The Times Higher Educational Supplement)

Chesterton finally gets the big book he deservesa monumental study (Gerald J. Russello, The National Catholic Register)

Heroically researched. An impressive book that conveys a powerful sense of [Chestertons] personality (DJ Taylor, The Independent)

magisterial.. a splendid book (James E. Person Jr., Touchstone)

this full-length scholarly biography will be indispensable for decades (Richard Harries, The Church Times)

Professor Ker's spirited and double-barreled attempt at a rehabilitation of his cherished subject is enjoyable in its own right, and takes in such matters as Chesterton's dialectical genius for paradox, the authority of the Father Brown stories in the detective genre, and the salience of Charles Dickens in the English canonical one (Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic)

About the Author:

Ian Ker has taught both English literature and theology in universities in the United States and Britain, where he currently teaches in the theology faculty. He is the author and editor of more than twenty books on Newman, including John Henry Newman: A Biography (1988), as well as the author of The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845-1961 (2003).

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0199601283
• ISBN 13: 9780199601288
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 782