G. K. CHESTERTON
Fancies Versus Fads
Extent: 266 pages
Trim: 10.7 x 17.7 cm
ISBN: 9781916809239
Price: $18
In the essays collected in Fancies versus Fads, G. K. Chesterton positions himself as an assailant of “the nonsense of the world”: a sworn enemy of fashionable doctrines and the excesses into which they lead their adherents. While sometimes dismissed as a fogeyish reactionary—an image to which he at times gleefully plays up—Chesterton emerges from these essays as a witty and perceptive critic possessed of a profound generosity of spirit. Ranging in its preoccupations from psychoanalysis and the temperance movement to child-rearing and free verse, Fancies versus Fads is a brilliant introduction to one of the most distinctive voices of twentieth-century literature.