Chesterton and the Jews

G. K. Chesterton’s patriotism and growing sympathy for the poor had always vied with his appreciation of Jewish family values and his gratitude to the Jewish people for bringing God to the world. Then, with the rise of Nazism, Chesterton once again became their champion. Chesterton and the Jews peels away post-Holocaust assumptions to reveal his complex feelings for “the Jews” — admiration, fascination, and fear — uncovering neglected layers of meaning in stories hitherto seen as anti-Semitic. No other work has considered this subject in such depth. Drawing upon Jewish publications, research into the Chesterton archives and genealogical records, painstaking analyses of Chesterton’s fiction and non-fiction — and including elucidations of the works of Shaw, Wells, Churchill, Belloc, and Cecil Chesterton, among others — Ann Farmer has made a signal contribution to the study of anti-Semitism, racism, eugenics, and Zionism. A question addressed only tangentially in Chesterton biographies is