The Defendant
1901
- essays
- history
- nonfiction
- english essays
- british and irish fiction (fictional works by one author)
- essays (single author)
- philosophy
- english literature
- english authors
- american short stories
The story
Covering topics ranging from literature to philosophy, history to social criticism, this is a snapshot of thought on 20th-century Europe (and the world) by one of Europe's sharpest wits and ablest pens. With chapter titles ranging from “The Miser and His Friends” to “The Red Reactionary,” from “The Separatist and Sacred Things” to “The New Theologian” and “The Romantic in the Rain,” this volume includes 39 brief sketches of individuals, each one of whom illustrates an aspect of contemporary society. Social, historical, and religious thought all figure prominently in this book, making it of great use in any study of the literary, religious, and social aspects of early 20th-century England and Europe generally. It will be of interest to students and scholars of the essay in English literature. It is a fine introduction to Chesterton's social criticism, which remains unique for its willingness to criticize some of the uncomfortable truths about capitalism without straying toward an inhuman bureaucratic socialism.
What it’s like
Brisk, epigrammatic prose that turns ordinary things inside out: a reader meets a long run of short portraits, each a few pages, each built on a reversal that makes a familiar type of person or social habit suddenly strange. The voice is mock-solemn and combative, cheerfully contrarian, with sentences that land like punchlines and paradoxes that keep circling back to common sense. The sensory world is Edwardian London and its outskirts, rendered through talk, streets, and clubs rather than landscape, so the atmosphere is of smoke, argument, and drawing rooms. Mood is witty and warm rather than dark, with a steady undercurrent of moral seriousness about money, religion, and class. Intensity is very low: no violence, no sexual content, nothing frightening, only sharp satire and the occasional sting aimed at fashionable opinion. It suits an unhurried afternoon, a chair by a window, or a few sketches read before bed, and it works as a comfort read for anyone who enjoys essayists who argue with pleasure. It is for readers who want intelligent, playful social commentary in short, self-contained bursts, and for students of the Edwardian essay who want its tone of confident, good-humoured dissent.
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