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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)

Alice Meynal pronounced G.K. Chesterton the greatest living Englishman. "Preposterous," replied Harriet Monroe. To Rebecca West, Chesterton was "condescending and abhorrently fat." To Henry James, an unspeakable sort of elephant. "An old fogey," added Ezra Pound.

What is mainly interesting in his breezy study The Edwardians, is to watch author John Patterson's fascination with Chesterton grow through the book. He fails ultimately to solve the puzzle, however. [Chicago, 1996, pp. 211, 105, 159, and 209]

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