10 Books A Day #24

Selected Essays...G. K. Chesterton...Wilco Publishing House

St. Francis of Assissi...G. K. Chesterton...Doubleday Image

The Everlasting Man...G. K. Chesterton...Doubleday Image

The Club of Queer Trades...G. K. Chesterton...Carrol & Graf

Charles Dickens...G. K. Chesterton...Wordsworth Editions

Collected Works Vol. I: Heretics, Orthodoxy, The Blatchford Controversies...G. K. Chesterton...Ignatius

Collected Works Vol. XIV: Short Stories, Fairy Tales, Mystery Stories...G. K. Chesterton...Ignatius

Collected Works Vol. VIII: The Return of Don Quixote, Tales of the Long Bow, The Man Who Knew Too Much...G. K. Chesterton...Ignatius

Collected Works Vol. XI: Plays, Chesterton On Shaw...G. K. Chesterton...Ignatius

Collected Works Vol. XXI: What I Saw In America, The Resurrection of Rome, Sidelights...G. K. Chesterton...Ignatius

The Annotated Thursday: G. K. Chesterton's Masterpiece The Man Who Was Thursday...G. K. Chesterton, Annotated by Martin Gardner...Ignatius

The Ignatius Press project of producing the collected works of GKC is a grand and glorious one, and if I had the resources I would gladly buy the thirty or so volumes printed so far, in hardback if possible. This are not thin little volumes, either, but big fat bricks of books, awash with annotations and introductions.

Martin Gardner is another one of those peculiar admirers that Chesterton collects. Gardner is something of an arch-skeptic and materialist, who for some reason (perhaps he needs the relief from being so rational all the time) loves fantasy and whimsy. In addition to Thursday, Gardner has also annotated the works of Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum.

While searching Google for an illustration for today's post, I ran across the Gervasio Gallardo cover shown above, for when The Man Who Was Thursday was published as part of Ballantine Books' (later Del Rey's) Adult Fantasy series. I started getting books just a little too late to get the early stuff, but in time to pick them up in used book stores. I came to like Gallardo's style, which was always kind of bizarre while being solid and detailed.