This volume collects 52 of G.K. Chesterton's Father's Brown stories, including the rare story, "The Donnington Affair," which was omitted from the collections published during the author's lifetime. Also included are an Introduction to Father Brown and an About the Author section. "For anyone who reads detective fiction at all, G.K. Chesterton and his creation Father Brown are such an important, established part of the furniture as almost to go unnoticed. (What inhabitant of London actually bothers to look at Nelson's Column or—as in one famous Chesterton story—the doings of a postman?) ... [The] Father Brown stories are so cosily familiar that you forget they're the work of a fine and gaudy stylist. Even when dictating stories at high speed to pay the rent or finance his political magazine, even when resorting to the most unlikely contortions of plot, Chesterton outperformed his rivals by sheer style, wit and energy." —David Langford
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.
