SOURCE: "The Man Who Was Thursday," in G. K C. as M C.: Being a Collection of Thirty-Seven Poems, edited by J. P. de Fonseka, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1929, pp. 202-07.

In the following essay, which was originally published in 1926 as an introduction to Mrs. Cecil Chesterton and Ralph Neale's stage adaptation of The Man Who Was Thursday, Chesterton comments on the origins and themes of his novel.

It is the more desirable that I should write a few lines to express my thanks to those who have here paid my story [The Man Who Was Thursday (a play in three acts, adapted from the novel by G. K. Chesterton), by Mrs. Cecil Chesterton and Ralph Neale. Messers. Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1926.] the compliment of casting it in another and (quite probably) a better form, because long after I had given to them, and to them alone, such authorization as...