Page 340 - DENG502_PROSE

Prose Digvijay Pandya, Lovely Professional University

Notes
Unit 32: G.K. Chesterton-On Lying In Bed: Critical
Appreciation cum Analysis

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
32.1 Critical Appreciation-On Lying in Bed
32.2 Analysis
32.3 Summary
32.4 Key-Words
32.5 Review Questions
32.6 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Know about Chesterton as a Critic.
• Examine Chesterton’s essay ‘On Lying in Bed.’

Introduction

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a prolific English critic and author of verse, essays, novels, and short
stories. He is probably best known for his series about the priest-detective Father Brown who
appeared in 50 stories. Between 1900 and 1936 Chesterton published some one hundred books.
G.K. Chesterton was born in London into a middle-class family on May 29, 1874. He studied at
University College and the Slade School of Art (1893-96). Around 1893 he had gone through a
crisis of skepticism and depression and during this period he experimented with the Ouija board
and grew fascinated with diabolism. In 1895 Chesterton left University College without a degree
and worked for the London publisher Redway, and T. Fisher Unwin (1896-1902). Chesterton later
renewed his Christian faith; the courtship of his future wife, Frances Blogg, whom he married in
1901 also helped him to pull himself out of his spiritual crisis.
In 1900 appeared Greybeards At Play, Chesterton’s first collection of poems. Robert Browning
(1903) and Charles Dickens (1906) were literary biographies. The Napoleon Of Notting Hill (1904)
was Chesterton’s first novel, a political fantasy, in which London is seen as a city of hidden
fairytale glitter. In The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) Chesterton depicted fin-de-siècle decadence.

In 1909 Chesterton moved with his wife to Beacons field, a village twenty-five
miles west of London, and continued to write, lecture, and travel energetically.

Between 1913 and 1914 Chesterton was a regular contributor for the Daily Herald. In 1914 he
suffered a physical and nervous breakdown. After World War I Chesterton became leader of the
Distributist movement and later the President of the Distributist League, promoting the idea that

334 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY