
- Not to be confused with Robert Louis Stevenson (1902) by G. K. Chesterton and W. Robertson Nicoll. G.K. Chesterton was a journalist, poet, novelist, playwright, debater, and Catholic apologist in the early twentieth century. When Stevenson first appeared, Sir Edmund Gosse, England's leading literary critic, wrote: I have just finished reading the book in which you smite the detractors of R.L.S. hip and thigh. I cannot express without a sort of hyperbole, the sentiments which you have awakened; of joy, of satisfaction, of relief, of malicious and vindictive pleasure. We are avenged at last...It is and always since his death has been impossible for me to write anything which went below the surface of R.L.S. I loved him, and still love him, too tenderly to analyze him. But you, who have the privilege of not being dazzled by having known him, have taken the task into your strong competent hands. You could not have done it better. The latest survivor, the only survivor, of his little early circle of intimate friends thanks you from the bottom of his heart.
Author

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly. Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.