The Return of Don Quixote is a novel by G. K. Chesterton. Published in 1927 by Chatto & Windus in London and by Dodd, Mead & Co. in New York, it was his final novel.
By 1963, when it was reprinted by Darwen Finlayson, it was considered one of his lesser-known works. [1]
Chesterton began working on the novel prior to World War I, and returned to it sporadically over the years. In the 1920s, he began working on it again, when the turmoil following the war made literature more conducive to criticizing social institutions. Initially serialized in G. K.'s Weekly in 1925, the novel was ill-suited to the medium and was phased out of serialization, to be fully published in 1927. [2] [3]
In 1912, Chesterton published an essay in The New York Times also entitled "The Return of Don Quixote." In it, he mused about a latter-day returning of the character, placed into modern society: "I want to ask whether, if Don Quixote returned today with the same wild ways of knight errantry, it would not rather be the knight errant that was sensible and the world all around him that was crazy." [4]
Librarian Michael Hearne participates in an amateur reenactment play and develops a Don Quixote-like attitude, which gradually foments social revolution and a return to medievalism.
The Return of Don Quixote garnered critical acclaim at the time of its publication. Reviewers applauded the wit and depth of the novel. Readers would enjoy the work, regardless of whether they appreciated its deeper meaning. Chesterton continued his track record of consistently entertaining and high quality writing, intermixed with profound thoughts. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
The Scotsman appreciated the novel's swift moving plot. [12] The Leeds Mercury called the novel "G. K. Chesterton at his best" [13] Ralph Straus in The Bystander agreed, and called Chesterton "unplaceable" in a favorable review. [14] The Sphere pointed out that Chesterton's humor undermined his being taken seriously, despite the heroic motivations of his satire. [15]
While reviews were overwhelmingly positive, the Sheffield Daily Telegraph was disappointed in the didactic plot and longed for his earlier and more entertaining fantasy work. Similarly, Truth found it overall lacking in details to lend the narrative verisimilitude, leading to a jarring lack of believability. [16] [17]
In the United States, Donald Douglas of the New York Herald Tribune reviewed the novel favorably, while John Chamberlain of the New York Times found the work to be chaotic and bewildering. [18] [19]
More recently, Chesterton scholar Dale Ahlquist observed that while Hearne is the Quixote figure, it is actually Douglas Murrel who is the main character. The novel is stylistically different that Chesterton's other novels in its heavy usage of dialog. While some criticized the author's inclusion of his typical interests and preoccupations (such as Distributism), Ahlquist found no fault in this; Chesterton continued to champion the values that he found most enduring. [20]
Philosopher Stephen R. L. Clark pointed out that the prime minister in the novel is the same as in Chesterton's Tales of the Long Bow, a source of pointed satire for the author. Clark also examined the accusation levied at Chesterton that he desired a reactionary return to medieval society, identifying instead a tension between two conceptions of medieval society, “a romanticized excuse for tyranny” vs “the flowering of medieval seeds into a really better world." Chesterton didn't actually want to go back to that early time period. Instead, he sought to learn from it. [21]
Don Quixote, the full title being The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. Considered a founding work of Western literature, it is often said to be the first modern novel. Don Quixote is also one of the most-translated books in the world and one of the best-selling novels of all time.
Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching principles, especially those of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931). It has influenced Anglo Christian Democratic movements, and has been recognized as one of many influences on the social market economy.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English author, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic.
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare is a 1908 novel by G. K. Chesterton. The book has been described as a metaphysical thriller.
Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective. He is featured in 53 short stories by English author G. K. Chesterton, published between 1910 and 1936. Father Brown solves mysteries and crimes using his intuition and keen understanding of human nature. Chesterton loosely based him on the Rt Rev. Msgr John O'Connor (1870–1952), a parish priest in Bradford, who was involved in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922. Since 2013, the character has been portrayed by Mark Williams in the ongoing BBC television series Father Brown.
Maurice Baring was an English man of letters, known as a dramatist, poet, novelist, translator and essayist, and also as a travel writer and war correspondent, with particular knowledge of Russia. During World War I, Baring served in the Intelligence Corps and Royal Air Force.
This is a list of the books written by G. K. Chesterton.
Edith Marion Grossman was an American literary translator. Known for her work translating Latin American and Spanish literature to English, she translated the works of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso, Jaime Manrique, Julián Ríos, Álvaro Mutis, and Miguel de Cervantes. She was a recipient of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and the 2022 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation.
G.K.'s Weekly was a British publication founded in 1925 by writer G. K. Chesterton, continuing until his death in 1936. Its articles typically discussed topical cultural, political, and socio-economic issues yet the publication also ran poems, cartoons, and other such material that piqued Chesterton's interest. It contained much of his journalistic work done in the latter part of his life, and extracts from it were published as the book The Outline of Sanity. Precursor publications existed by the names of The Eye-Witness and The New Witness, the former being a weekly newspaper started by Hilaire Belloc in 1911, the latter Belloc took over from Cecil Chesterton, Gilbert's brother, who died in World War I: and a revamped version of G. K.'s Weekly continued some years after Chesterton's death by the name of The Weekly Review.
Manalive (1912) is a book by G. K. Chesterton detailing a popular theme both in his own philosophy, and in Christianity, of the "holy fool", such as in Dostoevsky's The Idiot and Cervantes' Don Quixote.
Don Quixote is a ballet in three acts, based on episodes taken from the famous novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa to the music of Ludwig Minkus and first presented by Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet on 26 December [O.S. 14 December] 1869. Petipa and Minkus revised the ballet into a more elaborate and expansive version in five acts and eleven scenes for the Mariinsky Ballet, first presented on 21 November [O.S. 9 November] 1871 at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre of St. Petersburg.
"The Rolling English Road" is one of the best-known poems by G. K. Chesterton. It was first published under the title "A Song of Temperance Reform" in the New Witness in 1913. It was also included in the novel by Chesterton, The Flying Inn, in 1914.
Don Quixote (1933) is a British-French film adaptation of the classic Miguel de Cervantes novel, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, starring the famous operatic bass Feodor Chaliapin. Although the film stars Chaliapin, it is not an opera. However, he does sing four songs in it. It is the first sound film version of the Spanish classic. The supporting cast in the English version includes George Robey, René Donnio, Miles Mander, Lydia Sherwood, Renée Valliers, and Emily Fitzroy. The film was made in three versions—French, English, and German—with Chaliapin starring in all three versions.
Don Quixote is a 1955 sketch by Pablo Picasso of the Spanish literary hero and his sidekick, Sancho Panza. It was featured on the August 18–24 issue of the French weekly journal Les Lettres Françaises in celebration of the 350th anniversary of the first part, published in 1605, of the Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote. Made on August 10, 1955, the drawing Don Quixote was in a very different style than Picasso’s earlier Blue, Rose, and Cubist periods.
Dale Ahlquist is an American author and advocate of the thought of G. K. Chesterton. Ahlquist is the president and co-founder of the American Chesterton Society and the publisher of its magazine, Gilbert. He is also the co-founder of Chesterton Academy, a Catholic high school in Minneapolis.
The Ball and the Cross is a novel by G. K. Chesterton. The title refers to a more worldly and rationalist worldview, represented by a ball or sphere, and the cross representing Christianity. The first chapters of the book were serialized from 1905 to 1906 with the completed work published in 1909.
Frances Alice Blogg Chesterton was an English author of verse, songs and school drama. She was the wife of G. K. Chesterton and had a large role in his career as amanuensis and personal manager.
Quichotte is a 2019 novel by Salman Rushdie. It is his fourteenth novel, published on 29 August 2019 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom and Penguin Books India in India. It was published in the United States on 3 September 2019 by Random House. Inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's classic novel Don Quixote, Quichotte is a metafiction that tells the story of an addled Indian-American man who travels across America in pursuit of a celebrity television host with whom he has become obsessed.
Four Faultless Felons is a collection of stories by G. K. Chesterton, comprising four mystery novelettes connected by the theme of persons assumed to be criminals, who are paradoxically not so. Published in 1930 in London by Cassell and in New York by Dodd, Mead & Co., it was the final collection of mystery stories that appeared during Chesterton's lifetime.