Background: When I was the editor of Gilbert Magazine, I was responsible for the "Tremendous Trifles" column. It was occasionally hard to find a sufficient amount of interesting GKC material to fill the page, so John Peterson sent me a file full of Chesterton ancedotes. They were idiosyncratic, historical, and Chestertonian. He gave me permission to use them here. I hope y'all find them as interesting as I have over the years. Most of them have never been published.
Chesterton Short(s)
Disappointed by the reception of his autobiographical Father and Son (published in 1907], Edmund Gosse complained to his fellow critic Arthur Symons that the editors were now interested only in "the new school of Chesterton and Belloc, ltd.," proving, according to Gosse, that editors "lack judgment." [Ann Thwaite, Edmund Gosse, Chicago, 1984, p. 439]
