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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)

When Dorothy Sayers attempted to explain the process that an author uses to create a character, she found she could not improve on the "detective system" expounded by Father Brown in the story, "The Secret of Father Brown." Sayers quoted the priest's own summary ("I really did see myself, and my real self, committing the murders.") Similarly, she argued, "the jealousy of Othello is the true creative expression of the jealousy of Shakespeare." [The Mind of the Maker, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941, p. 29]

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