The Defendant

In 1901, with only two poetry volumes to his name, G.K. Chesterton was very much in the up-and-coming bracket among writers. But he had already built a reputation for brilliant wit, original incisiveness, and a love of paradox in many essays published in journals. A group of these had a common theme: they were defences, discussing things which society, to his mind, dismissed unfairly or, at the very best, undervalued. Lifting sixteen of them from the pages of The Speaker, he compiled his very first book of prose. In A Defence of Rash Vows he despises the limitations imposed by mealy-mouthed cowardice; in A Defence of Skeletons he revels in essential coarseness; in A Defence of Nonsense he insists that childlike wonder requires preservation in our culture; in A Defence of Heraldry he frowns upon the lowest common denominations which modern democracy espouses; in A Defence of Ugly Things he celebrates nature's unashamed exuberance; in A Defence of Humility he similarly supports the beauty of the commonplace; and in A Defence of Patriotism he bemoans the vulgarity which has usurped the true patriot's necessary sensitivity. These short essays, and the nine others in this book, illustrate a mind whose original political and social insight, and piercing critical instincts, though they were sometimes led astray by his irascibility, cut through dogma and convention to an extraordinary degree.