Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith) 1874-1936
English critic, novelist and poet

Born in London, he was educated at St Paul's School and studied art at the Slade School. However, he never practised professionally, although he contributed illustrations to Hilaire Belloc's novels. Much of his best work went into essays and articles, some of which appeared in his own G.K's Weekly, founded in 1925. He became a Roman Catholic in 1922, a decision clearly foreshadowed in his writing, the best of which was published before that date. His early books include two collections of poetry, followed by The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), liberal and anti-Imperialist in outlook, brilliant literary studies of Robert Browning (1903), Dickens (1906) and Robert Louis Stevenson (1907), and the provocative Heretics (1908) and Orthodoxy (1908). The amiable detective-priest Father Brown, who brought Chesterton popularity with a wider public, first appeared in The Innocence of Father Brown (1911). He also wrote lives of St Francis of Assisi (1923), and St Thomas Aquinas (1933), Collected Poems (1933), and an Autobiography (published posthumously in 1936). An ebullient personality, quick-witted, with a robust humour, he was one of the most colourful and provocative writers of his day. He married Ada Elizabeth Jones, journalist and writer, who pioneered the Cecil Houses for London's homeless women.

Bibliography: P Braybrooke, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1922)