Academic professionalism and the triumph of the specialist have greatly reduced the role of the gifted generalist, and with exceptions such as Malcolm Muggeridge, P. J. Kavanagh, or a few writers for such journals as the
Spectator or the
Listener, the essay as a practiced literary art has almost disappeared. The newspaper or even journal article is often no longer seen as, and rarely is, a literary work. And past classics in the genre are mainly embalmed in collections, nowadays not usually studied in universities, though valued as a source of literary history, and, in the case of a few luminaries, admired as models of "personal" style.
Chesterton himself, never claiming to be more than a journalist, but nonetheless a prolific writer of essays (most of them written to meet deadlines in newspapers and journals), expressed misgivings about the essay.
This is a free page. This page contains 141 words. This
biography contains 7,441 words (approx. 25 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Gilbert Keith Chesterton Access Pass.
