Utopia of Usurers: and Other Essays

by G. K. Chesterton

Overview

Utopia of Usurers is a classic collection of political essays which comment upon the conditions of Great Britain by G.K. Chesterton. What is it that angers Chesterton and fills him with grim forebodings for the future of his island? Many things and, especially, many persons. But chiefly the capitalists, the upper middle class, the usurers, or however they be termed, and the fear of the servile state, the state in which art and literature and science and efficiency and morality and everything else that has value in the eyes of mortal man become the humble servants of the money-changers, in short, the "utopia of usurers." --The Dial, 1918.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951319670
Publisher:	Wiseblood Books
Publication date:	12/18/2023
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.29(d)

About the Author

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, (29 May 1874 - 14 June 1936), was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, lay theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic. Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox".Time magazine has observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories-first carefully turning them inside out.
Chesterton is well known for his fictional priest-detective Father Brown,[5] and for his reasoned apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man.[4][6] Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, his "friendly enemy", said of him, "He was a man of colossal genius."[4] Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin.
Chesterton was born in Campden Hill in Kensington, London, the son of Marie Louise, née Grosjean, and Edward Chesterton.[8][9] He was baptised at the age of one month into the Church of England,[10] though his family themselves were irregularly practising Unitarians.[11]According to his autobiography, as a young man Chesterton became fascinated with the occultand, along with his brother Cecil, experimented with Ouija boards.
Chesterton was educated at St Paul's School, then attended the Slade School of Art to become an illustrator. The Slade is a department of University College London, where Chesterton also took classes in literature, but did not complete a degree in either subject.
In September 1895 Chesterton began working for the London publisher Redway, where he remained for just over a year.[14] In October 1896 he moved to the publishing house T. Fisher Unwin,[14] where he remained until 1902. During this period he also undertook his first journalistic work, as a freelance art and literary critic. In 1902 the Daily News gave him a weekly opinion column, followed in 1905 by a weekly column in The Illustrated London News, for which he continued to write for the next thirty years.

Table of Contents

Utopia of Usurers I. Art and Advertisement II. Letters and the New Laureates III. Unbusinesslike Business IV. The War on Holidays V. The Church of the Servile State VI. Science and the Eugenists VII. The Evolution of the Prison VIII. The Lash for Labour IX. The Mask of Socialism