The Club of Queer Trades (Annotated)

by G. K. Chesterton

Overview

• This edition includes the following editor's introduction: G. K. Chesterton, the man beyond the writer

First published in 1905, “The Club of Queer Trades” is a collection of six amusing stories by English writer G. K. Chesterton.

Each story in the collection is centred on someone who is making his living by some novel and extraordinary means (a "queer trade", using the word "queer" in the sense of "strange"), a potential candidate for The Club of Queer Trades. To gain admittance one must have invented a unique means of earning a living and the subsequent trade being the main source of income.

The framing narrative by "Cherub" Swinburne describes his quest for The Club of Queer Trades with his friend Basil Grant, a retired judge, and Rupert Grant, a private detective who is Basil's younger brother. Each of the stories describes their encounter with people with an unique way of making a living, which makes them eligible for the select and secretive club.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9791221388329
Publisher:	ePembaBooks
Publication date:	12/08/2022
Sold by:	StreetLib SRL
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 - 14 June 1936) better known as G. K. Chesterton, was an English writer, lay theologian, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, literary and art critic, biographer, and Christian apologist. Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox." Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, 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, and for his reasoned apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognized the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both Progressivism and Conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton's "friendly enemy" according to Time, said of him, "He was a man of colossal genius." Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin.