“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”
(1874 - 1936)
(1874 - 1936)
Curious facts about:
Way back in 1894, 11 years before he published his first novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Chesterton apparently wrote a semi-autobiographical romance about a character named Basil Howe. The manuscript never saw print, possibly because Chesterton's wife, whom he met in 1896, didn't like it. Nearly 100 years later, when hundreds of Chesterton's notebooks and papers were being transferred from his estate to the British Library, a Chesterton scholar discovered and reconstructed the novel. Basil Howe was recently published in the United Kingdom.
In addition to influencing many Christian writers of his era Chesterton inspired at least two political leaders. In a column published in the United States October 2, 1909, Chesterton complained that the nationalist movement in India was neither nationalist nor Indian, but merely a reaction against British imperialism. He thought that Indian sovereignty, which he supported, should be based on Indian culture and tradition instead. Mahatma Gandhi followed this advice. Back in the British Isles, cagey Irish nationalist Michael Collins took a cue from Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and avoided capture by traveling in plain sight.