The Wisdom of Father Brown
Father Brown is back in The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914), the second of five collections of short stories featuring G. K. Chesterton’s unlikely, lovable priest-detective. Included are “The Paradise of Thieves” and “The Purple Wig,” which frequently rank among Chesterton’s top ten tales. Along with his sidekick, reformed criminal M. Hercule Flambeau, Father Brown employs his legendary intuition and insight into the criminal mind to unerringly solve even the most baffling of mysteries—among them the perplexing case of a man who was shot without firearms and the eerie tale of the Spaniard’s curse. Chesterton’s wildly popular Father Brown stories—which he continued to write until his death in 1936—are among the most beloved of the detective fiction genre.
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G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, lay theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic. Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox". Time magazine has observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories - first carefully turning them inside out."
Chesterton is well known for his fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and for his reasoned apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, his "friendly enemy", said of him, "He was a man of colossal genius." Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin.
Father Brown Collection
Father Brown Collection consists of five books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
