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The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown (Dover Literature: Crime/Mystery/Thriller Short Stories) Paperback – November 2, 2011

by G. K. Chesterton (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 11 ratings
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Father Brown, an ordinary priest whose unremarkable exterior conceals extraordinary crime-solving ability, is celebrated for his solutions to metaphysical mysteries, a genre perfected by his creator, G. K. Chesterton. More than lighthearted comedies built around puzzling crimes, these superbly written tales contain deeply perceptive philosophical reflections.
The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) was the first collection of stories featuring the ecclesiastical sleuth and is widely considered the best. In this annotated edition of the collection, the Chesterton scholar Martin Gardner provides detailed notes and background information on various aspects of such stories as "The Blue Cross," "The Secret Garden," "The Invisible Man," "The Hammer of God," "The Eye of Apollo," and seven more, as well as an informative introduction and an extensive bibliography. Included also are eight illustrations reproduced from the first edition. The result is an indispensable companion for all Chesterton enthusiasts and a perfect introduction for anyone who has yet to meet the incomparable Father Brown.
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  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Dover Publications
  4. Publication date
    November 2, 2011
  5. Dimensions
    5.39 x 0.68 x 8.47 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0486298590
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0486298597
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Father Brown, an ordinary priest whose unremarkable exterior conceals extraordinary crime-solving ability, is celebrated for his solutions to metaphysical mysteries, a genre perfected by his creator, G. K. Chesterton. More than lighthearted comedies built around puzzling crimes, these superbly written tales contain deeply perceptive philosophical reflections.
The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) was the first collection of stories featuring the ecclesiastical sleuth and is widely considered the best. In this annotated edition of the collection, the Chesterton scholar Martin Gardner provides detailed notes and background information on various aspects of such stories as "The Blue Cross," "The Secret Garden," "The Invisible Man," "The Hammer of God," "The Eye of Apollo," and seven more, as well as an informative introduction and an extensive bibliography. Included also are eight illustrations reproduced from the first edition. The result is an indispensable companion for all Chesterton enthusiasts and a perfect introduction for anyone who has yet to meet the incomparable Father Brown.

About the Author

Widely known as the "Prince of Paradox," G. K. Chesterton was one of the most influential English writers and thinkers of the 20th century. Chesterton's prodigious talents embraced a wide range of subjects, from philosophy and religion to detective fiction and fantasy. And while his writings are light and whimsical, they are filled with direct and honest truths.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dover Publications; Annotated edition (November 2, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0486298590
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0486298597
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.39 x 0.68 x 8.47 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 11 ratings

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G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton

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G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a prolific English journalist and author best known for his mystery series featuring the priest-detective Father Brown and for the metaphysical thriller The Man Who Was Thursday. Baptized into the Church of England, Chesterton underwent a crisis of faith as a young man and became fascinated with the occult. He eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and published some of Christianity's most influential apologetics, including Heretics and Orthodoxy.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
11 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

RWS
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book
Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2019
Verified Purchase
If you love the Father Brown Stories you will love this book. Full of annotated notes explaining people, places and things throughout each story.
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Adrienne
5.0 out of 5 stars detective genius: Father Brown
Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2006
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I do not know if G.K. Chesterton can be matched in all of detective fiction. He combines fascinating plot lines, delicate and humorous characterization, with philosophy, religion, and an intense sensitivity to beauty and to the human spirit. One reads not just for the "knot," but for the discussions and their ideas, the descriptions, and the narrative unveiling of human vices and virtues. And they're fun to read!
2 people found this helpful
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S
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2017
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Arrived on time and just as described
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Kevin Killian
5.0 out of 5 stars Winner of the Don't Get Him Mad Award
Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2009
I loved Father Brown as a boy, for in grade school (6th grade) we had a textbook in which one of the stories was "The Oracle of the Dog," a story I entered scoffing and exited in a deep state of ecstatic belief. Soon I was reading as many of the stories as I could get my hands on, all the way up to "The Vampire of the Village." The stories in The Innocence of Father Brown, being the first ever written by GKC, are some of the best-remembered, and this edition is handsomely done. I found Martin Gardner's bibliographic notes most useful and curious: prior to this, I had no idea that most of the stories here were first published in America, and only then in England where they were often retitled (or were allowed to resume the titles GKC had in mind while writing them). "The Honour of Israel Gow," in which the little priest gives a dazzling trio of mutually exclusive explanations why diamond, candles, snuff, and the piece of a clock might be found near a body, was also called "The Strange Justice," maybe a better title? "The Hammer of God" was first called "The Bolt from the Blue" when it appeared in The Saturday Evening Post. Was it thought that US readers would think a reference to God in a detective story somehow blasphemous?

Gardner must be ninety if he's a day, but he still knows how to annotate someone else's good story. But he is the winner of this year's "Don't Get Him Mad Award," for his awesome vendetta against Owen Edwards who, according to Gardner, either instituted or ignored the plagiarism of many of Gardner's notes for this book when it came time to compile the best of Father Brown for the Oxford's World Classics series. Poor Owen Edwards, whom I imagine lying prostrate on the ground somewhere in an Oxford garden, littered with the diamonds, snuff, candle stubs, and broken watches of Gardner's nonagenarian wrath. He can be a terror!
2 people found this helpful
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Khrysserx
2.0 out of 5 stars PALER FIRE
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2006
I have been trying to recall, but I can't ever remember reading a stranger or more disappointing book than `The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown'. The text itself may be passed over, of course - it is the first collection of Father Brown mysteries by the great Edwardian writer G. K. Chesterton, and they are superb. Luckily they are available in many other editions than this one.

No, the sour note comes from the annotator, elucidator and irritator Martin Gardner. As a devout Carollian, I have owned and treasured his `Annotated Alice" and his `Annotated Snark' for many years, and I consider them absolutely indispensable. But in these Carrollian books he displays none of the cranky egomania he parades in this Chesterton volume.

He begins the edition with a furious tirade against a fellow self-important prig called Owen Edwards, about their conflict over some Chestertonian tidbit which would possibly be of slight interest to eight people in the world, and infuriating to no one. It is a hallmark of certain academics that, although they often take themselves with almost Ciceronian seriousness, they always end up behaving like children fighting over the best marbles.

Gardner also seems to have no concept of the pacing and careful building of suspense necessary in a mystery story, interrupting the action regularly to give us discursive information - for example, that Swinburne once lived in Putney, what `billiard chalk' is, who lived in Hampstead that was fantastically famous, and who Father Christmas is. Most amazingly, he takes a teeny-tiny reference to `Sunny Jim', an old advertising character for cereal flakes, from `The Three Tools of Death', and writes three entire pages of footnotes on Sunny Jim's history, nothing of which has the slightest connection with the Chesterton story and seem merely an excuse for Gardner to show how much more useless effluvia he knows than you do.

Charles Kinbote merely misrepresented the poetry of John Shade in Nabokov's story for his own selfish ends - Gardner seems completely undirected in his attitude towards Chesterton. He alternately gives the impression that G.K. was a deluded Catholic (Gardner himself is proud to tell you, in the introduction, that he is a `creedless philosophical theist' - which means, I think, if it means anything, `someone who is always right about everything and is ever so smug about it'), an admirable Thomist, a genius, a hack, and so on. Granted, Chesterton was many things, perhaps even all of these. But he was a humane and huge and vital man, and Gardner in this book seems like nothing more than one of those little gray fish that attach themselves to enormous sharks and then swim around with them for life, probably telling themselves `Hey look at me! I'm a great big shark!'

If you still like to be aggravated by this particular annotator, get this edition. If you like to read Chesterton, get another book.
27 people found this helpful
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