Book Spotlights Dark Side of 20th-Century British Writer Who Wrestled With Faith
The figure of the gargoyle is key to appreciating the early 20th-century British writer G.K. Chesterton, author John Tibbetts believes.
“The Dark Side of G.K. Chesterton: Gargoyles & Grotesques” (McFarland Publishing) is the fourth in a series of books about gothic fiction from the retired University of Kansas professor of film & media studies.
He began with “The Gothic Imagination: Conversations on Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction in the Media” and continued with “The Gothic Worlds of Peter Straub,” whom Tibbetts calls “America’s greatest ghost story writer.” Lately, he has focused on two early 20th-century British writers of the "weird fiction" genre. His biography, “The Furies of Marjorie Bowen,” is to be followed later this year by a two-volume critical study of her work in “The Marjorie Bowen Reader.”
His new book is “a highly idiosyncratic view that takes into account Chesterton as a fantasist, detective-story writer and science fiction prophet," Tibbetts said.
Like many of the 28 books Tibbetts has written or edited — either alone or with collaborators — this one can be traced back to a book he picked up as a child in his father’s library.