Centre d’Estudis i Documentació G. K. Chesterton

Chronology

1870
Beatrice, the eldest daughter of Edward and Marie Louise Chesterton, is born in Campden Hill (Kensington, London).
1874 May 29
Gilbert Keith is born in Campden Hill (Kensington, London).
1874 July 1
Anglican baptism of Gilbert at St George’s Church (Campden Hill, Kensington, London).
1878
Beatrice, Gilbert’s sister, dies at the age of eight.
1879 November 12
Cecil Edward, Gilbert’s brother, is born.
1879
Chesterton’s family moves to Sheffield Terrace in Warwick Gardens (Kensington, London).
1881
Gilbert enters Colet Court prep school (Hammersmith, London); he’ll study there for the period 1881-1886.
1886
Begins his notebook, in which he writes poetry and articles and makes drawings.
1887 January
Gilbert begins his secondary studies at St Paul’s School (Hammersmith, London).
1889
Gilbert and Cecil attend Bedford Chapel (Bloomsbury) with their parents to listen to the famous sermons of the Unitarian preacher Stopford Brooke.
1890 July
First meeting for the Junior Debating Club, made up of friends from St Paul’s School; he contributes to The Debater (1891-1893), the club’s journal.          
1892 December
Critical juncture for the Junior Debating Club ; the members split up to study at university.
1892
Gilbert wins the Milton prize, a poetry contest at St Paul’s School, with a poem on Saint Francis Xavier.
1893 October
Takes courses at University College London for the period 1893-1895.
1893
Existential crisis; he receives positive influences from Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson; he attends for some months St John’s Wood Art School.
1894 May
Lives for a while in Oxford, coinciding with his 20th anniversary.
1894
Attends the Slade School of Fine Art; he encounters a decadent environment and collides with the moderns’ scepticism; religious crisis.
1895 April 20
Publishes “Easter Sunday” in Clarion.   
1895
Works for some time as a reader for the publishers Readway’s, and subsequently for Fisher Unwin during the period 1895-1901.
1896 Autumn
With his friend Lucian Oldershaw, they visit the Bloggs in Bedford Park; they participate in the informal debate club I don’t know; he meets Frances.       
1896
Reads and writes extensively in his notebook; he hesitates between devoting himself to art or literature.
1898
In the summer he proposes to Frances in St James’s Park (London).
1899 July
Gertrude Blogg, Frances’s sister, dies in an accident.
1900 October
Publishes with the help of his father Greybeards at Play, a book of poems with his own illustrations.
1900 November
Another books of poems comes out, The Wild Knight and Other Poems, also with his father’s economic contribution.
1900
Becomes a regular contributor of The Speaker, The Bookman and the Daily News; meets Hilaire Belloc; participates in the election campaign of the Liberal Party; takes a stand against the Second Boer War.
1901 June 28
Gilbert and Frances get married at St Mary Abbots (Kensington); they go on honeymoon to the Norfolk Broads; they reside for a few months in Square Gardens (Kensington) until they move to Overstrand Mansions (Battersea).
1901
Publishes The Defendant, a collection of essays written for The Speaker; beginning of the friendship with Conrad Noel, who will influence Gilbert’s Anglo-Catholic vision; at the year’s close he and his initials —G. K. C.— were already prominent in Fleet Street and the wider literary world.
1902 febrer 10
Publicized as the Smoking Debate, Chesterton participated in a debate held at the Passmore Edwards Settlement under the title That the Solution of the Political Problems of the Future lies with the Liberal Party.
1902 May
Beginning of the friendship with Max Beerbohm.
1902 August
Public controversy with John Clifford on religion and the Balfour Education Bill.  
1902 October
Publishes Twelve Types, a second book of essays printed in The Speaker and the Daily News.
1902
Publishes Thomas Carlyle together with J. E. Hodder Williams and Robert Louis Stevenson with W. Robertson Nicoll; Chesterton and John Clifford maintained a public controversy in the pages of the Daily News; Clifford was the leader, from outside Parliament, of the opposition to the Education Bill proposed that year; Clifford objected to the law believing that would favour the expansion of Catholicism in Great Britain; Chesterton disagreed.
1903 febrer
Letter from Fr John O’Connor, chaplain of St Anne’s Catholic Church (Keighley), to Chesterton.
1903 March 16
Controversy amongst Chesterton and J. McCabe in the pages of the Daily News.
1903 August 8
The Leeds Mercury informed that Chesterton had gone to Scotland to finish his book The Napoleon of Notting Hill; it also mentioned Max Beerbohm and Graham Robertson in relation to the novel.
1903 September
Publishes Varied Types, a reprinting of Twelve Types (1902); eight more studies are added to the original twelve.
1903
Publishes Robert Browning, Charles Dickens with F. G. Kitton,Tennyson with Richard Garnett, Thackeray with Lewis Melville and Leo Tolstoy with G. H. Perris; long public controversy on religion with Robert Blatchford in the pages of The Clarion; beginning of his contributions to the Daily News through a weekly column during the period 1903-1913.
1904 March 22
Lecture by Chesterton at the Christian Theosophical Society on the subject How Theosophy appears to a Christian; Herbert Burrows confronted him vigorously in the subsequent debate.
1904 March
Publishes The Napoleon of Notting Hill, his first novel; meets Fr John O’Connor at the home of Francis Steinthal, a Jewish mutual friend, in Ilkley; Gilbert and O’Connor talked at length while walking through Ilkley Moor.         
1904 Spring
The Pioneer Club announces the spring programme, which includes a debate with Chesterton’s participation under the title That a Party Spirit is to be highly Encouraged.
1904 September
Incident with Alistair Crowley, to the point where there is nearly an open public debate, which ultimately Chesterton refuses; Gilbert contributes with 34 illustrations to Hilaire Belloc’s book Emmanuel Burden.
1904 Autumn
Publishes G. F. Watts, an innovative biographical essay on the life and works of this late-Victorian painter.
1904 December 12
Travels to Germany; gives a series of lectures at The Frankfurt Academy of Social Science, under the title English Contemporary Poetry.
1904
Carries out an intense activity; he writes regularly to several newspapers and gives lectures across the country; he gets involved in the London literary world by attending high society ceremonies and banquets; his popularity grows on both sides of the Atlantic, in Europe and America.
1905 febrer 12
Chesterton va donar una conferència al Hengler’s Circus (Lonres) amb el títol Religion and Equality.
1905 June 6
Publishes Heretics, a collection of 20 essays stemming from articles originally published in the press.
1905
Publishes The Club of Queer Trades, a series of stories about a club whose requisite to join is that members must invent a new occupation of which to make a living; they had been published in The Idler beforehand; beginning of his contribution to the Illustrated London News with a weekly page, under the heading Our Note Book, maintained all through the period 1905-1936.
1906 August
Publishes Charles Dickens; writes the introductions to those Dickens’s works published during the period 1906-1911; on the 25th, Knollys, Frances’s brother, commits suicide in a Sussex beach.
1906 Summer
Chesterton and Oldershaw travel to France; they visit sculptor Auguste Rodin’s study in Paris; there they meet G. B. Shaw, who was posing for a Roman bust.
1906
The Anti-Puritan League for the Defense of the People’s Pleasures; Cecil Chesterton was the provisional committee’s honorary secretary; Gilbert worked in it.     
1907
Gilbert changes his political attitudes; neither parliamentarian democracy was democratic no representative government was representative, and he is disappointed with Westminster leaders; they ask him publicly: Are you a Roman Catholic, and he answers: I’m not.
1908 febrer 15
G. B. Shaw invents the term Chesterbelloc in an article published in The New Age.
1908 September 10
Publishes All Things Considered, a compilation of articles written for The Illustrated London News.
1908 September 25
Orthodoxy comes out; it exhibits his consistent thinking, involving ideas and beliefs which he had been developing and had defended in earlier writings.
1908 November
Polemic on the subject of socialism between Chesterton and Belloc —against— and Shaw and Wells —in favour— in the pages of the radical newspaper The New Age.
1908
Publishes The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare; his second novel, it is considered the best of all his fiction writings.
1909 January 24
Publishes The Ball and the Cross, a novel which was well received by critics and readers alike on both sides of the Atlantic.
1909
Publishes George Bernard Shaw, a study on the life and thoughts of his friend and opponent in debates and public controversies; Tremendous Trifles, another collection of articles considered true gems of the short essay genre, comes out; Gilbert and Frances move from London to a house named Overroads in Beaconsfield (Buckinghamshire); Frances, after many surgeries and medical treatments, has to accept she won’t be able to have children; controversy with Robert Dell in the pages of the Church Socialist Quarterly; Chesterton takes part in the Report from the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the Stage Plays (Censorship); Maurice Baring, a friend of Gilbert, converts to Catholicism; Gilbert travels to France, Germany and Belgium.
1910 June 28
Publishes What’s Wrong With the World; it is not a comprehensive statement of everything he perceives is wrong in the world; one of the principles he defends is that of faith in extensive distribution of property; his point of view on feminism was a controversial aspect of it.
1910 November 4
Gives a lecture on chivalric virtues at St Edmund’s College (Ware), England’s oldest Catholic university.
1910 November
Publishes Alarms and Discursions, a new collection of his weekly press contributions; publishes William Blake, a critical study, in the Popular Art Library
1910
Publishes Five Types, a selection of essays from Twelve Types (1902).
1911 January
A Chesterton Calendar. Compiled from the Writings of G.K.C. comes out, a set of aphorisms and extracts of previous books; in 1926 a second Calendar is published  
1911
At the beginning of the year he publishes Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens, containing the introductions he had written to the works of Charles Dickens reissued from 1906 by Everyman Library.
1911 March
At the end of the month a debate was held at Queen’s Hall (London) on Woman Suffrage between Chesterton and Miss Cicely Hamilton.
1911 July
Publishes The Innocence of Father Brown, a collection of short stories based on the character of Father Brown, a priest detective modelled on his friend O’Connor; these stories had appeared separately in Storyteller and the magazine Cassell in the previous ten months; it became his most popular book; Father Brown’s secret is the mixture between innocence and wisdom.
1911 August
Publishes The Ballad of the White Horse, a long epic poem on one of the oldest British legends; Fr John O’Connor influenced it; Gilbert prepared it for a long time, visiting the battle sites and the hiding places of Alfred the Great; it shocked many readers, amongst whom G. Wyndham, J. Galsworthy, D. Hyde and G. Greene; beginning of the friendship and mutual influence between Gilbert and Fr Vincent McNabb; this Dominican priest starts his contribution to the Eye Witness (1911-1912), a weekly founded by Belloc and Cecil; the moral and social principles of the Catholic Church influenced the newspaper’s radicalism; its ideas came from Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum.
1911 November 17
Lecture by Chesterton at the Heretics Society (Cambridge) called The Future of Religion, also known as Some Dogmas of Mr. Bernard Shaw; it replied to G. B. Shaw’s lecture The Religion of the Future.
1911 November 30
Debate between Chesterton and G. B. Shaw at the Memorial Hall (London) moderated by Hilaire Belloc on the question That a democrat who is not also a socialist is no gentleman.
1911
Publishes The Wit and Wisdom of G. K. Chesterton, an anthology of epigrams, book extracts and press articles.
1912 February
Dispute with Gordon Selfridge, founder of the department stores Selfridges in London and one of the richest and most respected tycoons in Britain; on 2 February the Daily News published a letter, signed by nearly two hundred female workers employed by Selfridges, expressing their opinion on what became known as the big shops controversy —Women Workers at Selfridges, 1912—; they opposed the article The Big Shop which Chesterton had published in the same newspaper a week earlier; all this generated a wave of heated correspondence, columns and articles in the national and London press; he publishes Manalive, a fiction work; the role of women is essential in the story; a refreshing allegory turned into a novel, it’s a beautiful hymn to life.           
1912 June
The newspaper The New Witness (1912-1923), edited by Cecil, comes out.
1912 July 19
Public debate in the pages of The Clarion between Chesterton and Fred Henderson on the concept of the Servile State.
1912 October
Publishes A Miscellany of Men, a collection of 38 essays on everyday contemporary subjects from 20th century Europe.
1912
Publishes Simplicity and Tolstoy, a compilation of four essays on culture and famous thinkers; in addition to the title essay, the book also includes Francis, William Morris and his School and Thomas Carlyle; Gilbert and Frances buy the parcel in front of Overroads, where they will build an extensive study to accommodate friends and guests and to celebrate ceremonies and Christmas parties; Cecil joins the Catholic Church; beginning of the Marconi Scandal (1912-1913); Cecil, from the pages of The New Witness, reveals the use of privileged information by members of the government in the sale of Marconi shares; Godfrey Isaacs, one of the accused, sued him for libel.
1913 May
From 27 May to 7 June the case of Rex v. Chesterton was heard at the Central Criminal Court (London); Gilbert helps in his brother Cecil’s defense.
1913 June
Cecil converts to Catholicism in the middle of the trial for the Marconi scandal.
1913 October
As a result of Shaw’s continuous insistence for Chesterton to write theater, he publishes the play Magic.
1913 November 7
Magic opens at London’s Little Theatre.
1913
Publishes The Victorian Age in Literature; on top of praise for Dickens, his favourite writer, his also controversial views on several aspects of 19th century literature were also worthy of note, to the point where the editors disavowed them in the introduction to the book; Gilbert was sacked from the Daily News as a weekly columnist for the attacks received by its owner George Cadbury from the pages of The New Witness.
1914 January 7
Gilbert plays the main character in a mock trial at King’s Hall (Covent Garden, London); based in Dickens’s last unfinished novel, it is a humorous project sponsored by The Dickens Fellowship; John Jaspers is on trial for the murder of Edwin Drood.
1914 January 19
A public debate on Do Miracles Happen? was held at the Little Theatre (London) in response to some matters raised in Magic; on one side, the sceptics Joseph McCabe and J. A. Hobson, and on the other, the supporters of orthodox belief in miracles, Gilbert, Cecil and Belloc; the meeting’s moderator was Kenelm Foss, the director of Magic.
1914 January 22
Publishes The Flying Inn, a novel with many poems; it is an inventive personal hymn to freedom and joy.
1914 June
Chesterton and Shaw star in the silent film How Men Love, directed by Harley Granville-Baker, an unfinished western which never premiered officially but was shown for charity at the London Coliseum on 10 June 1916.
1914 July 28
Start of the First World War; Great Britain declares war to the German Empire on 4 August.
1914 November
Gilbert suffers a stroke owing to extreme nervous exhaustion; on Christmas Eve he goes into a prolonged coma; during this period Frances corresponds with Fr O’Connor and meets Fr McNabb.
1914
Publishes The Wisdom of Father Brown, a second series of short stories about the priest detective; it cemented Brown’s character and secured him a place in the annals of detective fiction; the collection’s twelve stories are among Father Brown’s shortest ones, and were all published beforehand in the Pall Mall review; publishes London, a book about the city which includes ten photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn; publishes The Barbarism of Berlin, a short book based on articles published since the start of the First World War in the Daily Mail as part of his work for the War Propaganda Bureau; it was published in neutral countries like Sweden or Spain; publishes Trial of John Jasper, Lay Precentor of Cloisterham Cathedral in the County of Kent, for the Murder of Edwin Drood, the transcript of the mock trial held on 7 January 1914 at King’s Hall (Covent Garden, London); based on Dickens’s last and unfinished novel, it’s a humorous project sponsored by The Dickens Fellowship, where John Jaspers is on trial for the murder of Edwin Drood; with another twenty-five English writers he takes part in the War Propaganda Bureau chaired by his friend C. F. G. Masterman; he helps by publishing books, pamphlets and articles on patriotic subjects during the Great War.       
1915 Spring
Still sick, he narrowly avoids death on the eve of Easter Sunday.   
1915 August
Publishes Wine, Water and Song, a short book which includes the tavern songs from The Flying Inn (1914); published right in the middle of the war, it had a warm reception and reached as many as fifteen editions.
1915 November
Publishes The Crimes of England, a new book in which he supports military action; written in a controversial and hurtful tone, it takes the shape of a series of answers to an imaginary German professor; it holds the thesis that England’s crimes are often due to German influence.
1915
Publishes Poems, a new poetry compilation, with Frances’s help; The Appetite of Tyranny comes out, which includes two previous, very short books: The Barbarism of Berlin (1914), an answer to the July crisis, and Letters to an Old Garibaldian (March 1915); it is a short reflexive book, though not always measured in its tone; it deals with what Chesterton sees as the roots of German aggression that lead to the First World War.
1916 October 12
The New Witness’s last issue with Cecil as editor-in-chief comes out; Gilbert takes charge of the direction of the weekly newspaper.  
1916
Publishes Divorce vs. Democracy, a work issued by the society of SS. Peter & Paul (London) which had previously been printed in Nash’s Magazine; publishes The Book of Job, with an extensive introduction by himself; publishes A Shilling for My Thoughts, a new selection of essays, stories and other writings, and Temperance and The Great Alliance, part of the True Temperance Association’s (London) pamphlets and other publications; Cecil joins in active service the Highland Light Infantry of the British Army, and marries Ada Jones at Corpus Christi Catholic Church (Covent Garden, London) on leave.
1917
Publishes Utopia of Usurers, a selection of articles written between 1913 and 1915 for the Daily Herald; it is a socialist document in which Chesterton attacks socialism as vehemently as could be expected towards capitalism; it is an extensive attack against the madness of modern economic and cultural life, for the sake of humanity, reason, justice and charity; he analyses the effect of the capitalist mindset on art, culture, family life, work and labour conditions; publishes Lord Kitchener, a biographical study of the British army high-ranking officer and colonial administrator of Irish origin who had a central role in the first half of the First World War and became War Secretary; he organized the largest ever British volunteer army and supervised the increase in supplies production to fight in the Western front; publishes A Short History of England, which had an impressive popular reception; it had nine editions in the first seven years; Ronald Knox converts to Catholicism.
1918 October 13
Trip to Ireland; the Irish poet W. B. Yeats invited Chesterton and Shaw to give lectures at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin; he writes some articles for The New Witness which will make up the book Irish Impressions (1919).      
1918 November 11
End of the First World War.
1918 December 6
Cecil Chesterton dies at the French theater; he’s buried at Terlincthun British Cemetery (Wimille).
1918
Publishes How to Help with Annexation, a short brochure that tackles the gradual phasedown of the First World War; it was a key moment in world history and Chesterton pointed out that imperialist policies were unadvisable on every front; the text puts forward two principles: support for democracy and opposition to imperialism; he argues, not without irony, that 1918 could be a repeat of 1871, as German aggression could only be repressed for a period of time; in particular, he wanted Alsace-Lorraine to be returned to France.
1919 March 28
Gilbert adheres with other prominent Englishmen to the petition of the Peace Conference to Restore Palestine to Jews.
1919 November
Publishes Irish Impressions, where he draws on and expands on the articles he had written for The New Witness on his trip to Ireland as a guest of W. B. Yeats; his considerations on nationalism are fair and to the point; he justifies Irish nationalism.
1919 December 12
Travels to Palestine with Frances in mid-April 1920; they follow the route Paris-Rome-Brindisi-Alexandria-Cairo-Jerusalem; the book The New Jerusalem (1920), a selection of his contributions to The Daily Telegraph, will stem from it.
1919
Chesterton publishes two articles condemning the British government’s policies: What are reprisals and The Danger to England; his works are translated in Poland, Russia and Hungary; under Gilbert’s direction, The New Witness launches the literary career of Dorothy L. Sayers.
1920 June
The First Anglo-Catholic Congress is held in London from 20 June to 2 July 1920; Chesterton takes part in the debate The Church and Social and Industrial Problems with Rev. Bishop Gore, Rev. E. K. Talbo
1920 Autumn
Publishes The Uses of Diversity, a new selection of essays written for The Illustrated London News and The New Witness; they are written in a lighthearted and humorous tone even when dealing with serious subjects; in one of them he attacks the pessimism underlying most of modern poetry and in another he declares that seriousness is not a virtue.
1920 November
Takes part in a mock trial play against editor Cecil Palmer.
1920 November 25
Debate in aid of The Road magazine between Chesterton and Hugh Walpole on Is the modern novel a sign of social decadence?; it was held at Victor Cazalet’s home.
1920
Publishes The Superstition of Divorce, the compilation of a series of articles printed under the same title for The New Witness in 1918, in which, for the most part, he does not speak of the sacramental or religious nature of marriage, but of its practical, historical and social reasons; publishes The New Jerusalem, a selection of articles from his trip to Palestine; he is absorbed in his work: he is directing The New Witness, writing weekly articles for The Illustrated London News and numerous collaborations in other periodicals and giving lectures around the country.
1921 January 1
In the New Year he begins, with Frances, his first trip to America and Canada, which will last three and a half months; he will give lectures in New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Nashville, Oklahoma, Omaha and Albany; he crosses the Canadian border and gives lectures in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa; the American tour concludes in New York, where they set sail in the Aquitania on 4 April; Gilbert registers his impressions of the trip in his book What I Saw in America (1922).
1921
Named president of The Dickens Fellowship (1921-1922); he adheres to the Manifesto of Leaders of the Intellectual Life of Great Britain on Ireland; Gilbert and Frances make expansion works in their study and build their future home, called Top Meadow; at the end of the year he writes letters about Catholicism to Maurice Baring and Ronald Knox.
1922 February
Publishes Eugenics and other Evils, a book which brought about one the few moments where Chesterton and Shaw publicly agreed.
1922 May
Edward Chesterton Gilbert and Cecil’s father, dies; he’s buried on 18 May in Brompton Cemetery (London), together with his daughter Beatrice.  
1922 July
Frances accedes in converting to Catholicism.
1922 July 30
Fr John O’Connor and Fr Ignatius Rice baptize Gilbert as a Catholic in Beaconsfield; he corresponds throughout July with Fr O’Connor and Fr McNabb.
1922 September
Gilbert receives the sacrament of confirmation in the Catholic parish church of High Wycombe (Buckinghamshire); publishes What I Saw in America, based on what he had seen during his trip there, in which Chesterton takes every opportunity to outline the differences between America and England and the characteristics that make each country unique; he defends that the traits, customs and traditions of each country are distinctive and must be preserved; it begins as a travel book but becomes, in the end, an extensive reflection on what makes every nation be a nation.
1922 October
Publishes The Ballad of St Barbara and Other Poems, a new poetry collection.
1922 November
Publishes The Man Who Knew Too Much, a series of short thrillers on high-end political corruption; the main character is Horne Fisher, a tall aristocratic detective; they had previously been published in Cassell’s Magazine and Storyteller.
1922
Travels to the Netherlands to honour an old pledge of giving some lectures; he stays there for a week, and gives a lecture on Charles Dickens at the Rotterdam English Association.
1923 May 4
The last issue of The New Witness comes out.
1923
Publishes St Francis of Assisi, his first work since his conversion; the book, simple and of great beauty, is organized almost as a symphonic poem; Chesterton admired this saint since his youth, and one of his first poems was, St Francis of Assisi, was published in The Debater on November 1892; the Poverello’s romanticism was an antidote against pessimism and obscurity; in Twelve Types (1902) he also devotes a chapter to him; Gilbert takes part in a public debate at the London Mansion House on Prohibition is anti-Christian and anti-social; at the London School of Economics, Chesterton and C. A. McCurdy hold a public debate on the question Is modern journalism worth the price we pay for it?; Chesterton, Shaw and Joseph Kenworthy take part in a public discussion on the meaning of the science-fiction novel R.U.R., written by the Czech Karel Čapek, which was successful in its time throughout Europe and North America, and introduced the word “robot” to the English language and to science-fiction; a stage adaptation premiered on 25 January 1919; publishes Poems, a new poetry collection; publishes Fancies Versus Fads, a new selection of essays previously published in the press.      
1924
Publishes The End of the Roman Road.
1925 March 21
The first issue of G. K.’s Weekly comes out; directed by Chesterton, the weekly will be the spokesperson of Merry England.
1925 April 15
Chesterton and G. B. Shaw hold a public debate on the subject Do animals have souls?
1925 June
Publishes Tales of The Long Bow, a series of stories previously printed in magazines in which the absurd, the creative and the humorous are in league with political criticism and distributist ideas.
1925 September
In 1920, H. G. Wells published The Outline of History, a history of the world from its origins to the First World War; as a response to Wells’ thesis Chesterton writes The Everlasting Man, a view of history from a Christian perspective
1925 November
Publishes the biographical study William Cobbett; Cobbett was an English publicist, journalist, MP and farmer, author of Rural Rides.
1925 December
The Return of Don Quixote, which will take the form of a novel in 1927, begins its publication in installments in G. K’s Weekly.
1925
Publishes The Superstitions of the Sceptic, a new collection of essays; Chesterton’s popularity at this moment in time makes him stand for rector of the Scottish University of Glasgow, an honorary post, when the students elected him after mass debates; Gilbert came up against the young feminists supported by the liberal press; in the end, the conservative Austen Chamberlain won with 1242 votes against Chesterton’s 968 and Sydney Webb’s 265.
1926 January 19
The stage adaptation by Ada Chesterton and Ralph Neale of The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) premieres at the Everyman Theatre (Hampstead).
1926 Early
Frances’s health deteriorates at the start of the year.
1926 April
Travels to Spain with Frances; in Madrid he gives a lecture in the Residencia de Estudiantes; he visits Toledo; he travels to Catalonia and gives a lecture in the University of Barcelona; stays for a few days in Sitges; begins a relationship with Catalan Catholic authors.
1926 June
Publishes The Incredulity of Father Brown, the third series of short stories from the priest detective. 
1926 September 17
The Distributist League is born in a public event held at the Essex Hall (Strand, London); the leading founders are Belloc, Chesterton, Fr McNabb, Eric Gill and Arthur Penty.
1926 October
The League opens branches in Croydon, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, and subsequently in Liverpool, Chatham, Worthing, Chorley, Cambridge and Oxford.
1926 November 1
Frances converts to Catholicism.    
1926 December
Publishes The Outline of Sanity, a collection of essays on distributism which had been published regularly on G. K’s Weekly; publishes The Catholic Church and Conversion, in which he explains his vision of Catholicism and the Catholic Church and how its appeal ended up convincing him to join; he describes with this words the two essential elements which can be found at the heart of his conversion: one is that it believes there is a solid objective truth, that there is truth whether you like it or not; the other is that it strives for the redemption of your sins.
1926
Dorothy Collins arrives at Top Meadow to work as a secretary to Gilbert; Eric Gill gives his unconditional support to all the social theories based on Pope Leo XIII’s encyclic Rerum Novarum (1891); Gilbert contributes to G. K’s Weekly; publishes The Queen of Seven Swords, a selection of twenty-four poems on the Virgin Mary; publishes Collected Works in The Minerva Edition of the Works of G. K. Chesterton (9 volumes); publishes Collected Poems, a new poetry compilation.
1927 January 27
Debate between Chesterton and Lady Rhondda at Kingsway Hall (London) moderated by G. B. Shaw; its subject was The Menace of the Leisured Woman.
1927 January 28
Within the framework of London University’s centenary, Chesterton gives a lecture titled Culture and the Coming Peril at University College’s Great Hall.
1927 April 4
Gilbert, Frances and Dorothy travel to Poland; on 28 April they arrive at Warsaw’s central station via Berlin; they visit Poznan, Krakow, Lwów, Vilnius, the salt mines in Wieliczka, the Zakopane resort in the Tatra mountains, the Ostra Brama shrine and Troki; in the return journey Chesterton and Dorothy stop in Belgium to rest for a week; they arrive in Beaconsfield in mid-June.
1927 October 28
A public debate is held at Kingsway Hall (London) between Chesterton and Shaw, moderated by Belloc; organized by the Distributist League, it was broadcast live on the BBC and its subject was Do We Agree?; Cecil Palmer transcribed it in a volume.
1927 October
Gives support publicly to his sister-in-law Ada’s project on the situation of homeless women.
1927 November
Publishes Robert Louis Stevenson, a biographical study of the Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer; Chesterton admired him since his teenage years.
1927
Having just arrived from Poland he gives two lectures, one in Essex Hall (Strand, London) on his recent trip, with the help of the archbishop of Westminster and the Polish Ambassador, and the other at University College London; debate on The Decay of Parliament between Chesterton and Mitchell Banks; publishes The Secret of Father Brown, dedicated to Fr John O’Connor of St Cuthbert, Bradford, a fourth series of ten short stories from the priest detective; publishes The Return of Don Quixote, previously serialized from December 1925 to November 1926 in G. K.’s Weekly; publishes The Judgement of Dr Johnson, a play on the polygraph Samuel Johnson, who Chesterton himself has been compared to, which boasts an ingenious script; publishes The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton, a new poetry collection; Gloria in Profundis, a poem with xylographs by Eric Gill; and Culture and the Coming Peril, a transcript of Chesterton’s lecture of the same title; Issue 7 of Centenary addresses; Volume 7 of Centenary celebrations; University College London; publishes Social Reform vs. Birth Control, a long essay edited by the League of National Life (London), in which Chesterton argues that it’s usually the rich elites who are interested in promoting population control, often as a means for avoiding the root problems which lead to poverty.
1928
Publishes Generally Speaking, a new collection of forty-two articles published in his weekly column Our Note Book of the Illustrated London News, on subjects such as archaeology, leisure, pleasure, funerary customs, Buddhism, King Arthur, Christmas, Poland, the Netherlands, Egypt, Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy, among others; publishes Do We Agree? with George Bernard Shaw, a transcript in book form of the public debate of October 1927; publishes The Sword of Wood, a short story.
1929 June
Is the West Decaying? A Debate is raised in the pages of The Forum, and Chesterton takes part in it with the article The West’s Defense.
1929 July
Publishes The Poet and the Lunatics, a collection of independent romantic and fantasy stories joined by the presence of the main character, Gabriel Gale, a painter and poet.
1929 October 10
Gilbert, Frances and Dorothy travel to Rome; Pope Pius XI grants him an audience in the Vatican; he meets with Benito Mussolini in the Palazzo Venezia.
1929 October
Publishes The Thing: Why I am a Catholic, in whose thirty-five articles he summarizes the more obvious attacks on the Catholic Church.
1929 December 12
Gives a lecture at the National North American College in Rome.
1929 December
Visits his friends Max Beerbohm and Ezra Pound in Rapallo; he returns to Beaconsfield on 12 December.
1929
Writes The Resurrection of Rome at the end of the year in a room in Rome’s Hotel Hassler; publishes G.K.C. as M.C. (collected introductions) with J. P. de Fonseka (ed.), a selection of thirty-seven introductions and prefaces; publishes Father Brown Omnibus, a compilation in a single volume of the Father Brown short stories; publishes Ubi Ecclesia, a poem with illustrations by Diana Murphy, Christmas Poems, a collection of Christmas-themed poems, and New and Collected Poems, a new compilation of poems.
1930 August
Publishes Four Faultless Felons, four brief novels loosely connected between them.
1930 September 9
Gilbert, Frances and Dorothy set sail from the port of Liverpool, on the White Star Line’s SS Doric, to go to America for a second time, via Canada; Gilbert gives lectures in St Lawrence, Quebec, Toronto and Montreal.
1930 October
He gives a series of lectures for six weeks at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana) on literature and Victorian history; on weekends he gives lectures in Milwaukee, Detroit and Chicago; publishes the poem The Grave of Arthur.
1930 November 11
Named Honorary Doctor in Law by the University of Notre Dame (Indiana)..
1930 December 12
Visits Holy Cross College in Worcester (Massachusetts), where the welcome he received was probably one of the warmest ones, including the greetings at the library’s entrance of seven students dressed as literary authors; Chesterton delivered the winter semester’s inaugural speech; to celebrate the event a special pamphlet was published, Chestertoniana, with a preface by Michael Earls S. J; the most prestigious tribute was offered by Paul Claudel, poet, playwright and essayist, then French ambassador to Washington.
1930 December
They spend Christmas and the New Year in New York.
1930
Travels the length through America, giving lectures in Cincinnati, New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Ohio, Buffalo, Albany, Massachusetts and again in New York; takes part in a public debate at the Mecca temple with Clarence Darrow, a Chicago lawyer skeptical on religion, on the subject of the history of creation; joins the Detection Club, made up of a group of British mystery writers, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, E.C. Bentley and Anthony Berkeley, with Chesterton as president for the period 1930-1936; publishes The Turkey and the Turk with illustrations by Thomas Derrick, a play featuring five characters which offers a satirical view on political, religious, cultural and scientific questions in the wake of the First World War; publishes Come to Think of It, a new selection of forty-three articles which appeared in the weekly column Our Note Book in the Illustrated London News; publishes The Resurrection of Rome, written during his las trip to Italy.
1931 January 11
A public debate was held in Boston between Chesterton and Cosmo Hamilton on Is Divorce a Social Asset?
1931 January 13
Chesterton gave a lecture in Washington under the title The Curse of Psychology, followed by a debate between him and Cosmo Hamilton on Is Psychology a Curse?           
1931 January
Continues his tour of America; from New York they head south en route to the west coast; he commits to more lectures in Chattanooga, Los Angeles, the California coast, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Oregon, and crossed the border to give more in Vancouver, Victoria and British Columbia, before returning to New York; Chesterton and Clarence Darrow held a public debate on Will the World return to Religion? in New Haven on 16 January, and two days later at the Mecca Temple (New York City).
1931 March
Between late March and early April they return to England after a few more lectures in New York; Gilbert arrives physically and mentally exhausted.
1931 December
On Christmas Day Chesterton speaks on the radio for the first time, in a BBC fifteen-minute broadcast for the United States on Charles Dickens and Christmas.
1931 Late
From the end of the year through to early 1932, Baring, Chesterton and Belloc posed for the artist James   Gunn, who depicted them in a painting called Conversation Piece.
1931
Debate on Is there a return to religion?, with Chesterton for and E. Haldeman-Julius against; publishes All is Grist, a compilation of articles written for the Illustrated London News; contributes, among other members of the Detection Club, to the book The Floating Admiral; Dorothy Collins converts to Catholicism.
1932 May
Publishes Sidelights of New London and Newer York, a selection of essays, with three distinct sections, which include experiences from his second trip to America in 1930-31; it deals with subjects such as fashion, immorality, prohibition, capitalism and commercialism, impartiality, psychology and modern marriage.
1932 June 6
Gilbert and Frances travel to Ireland to attend the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin.
1932 October
Produces a series of radio programmes on books for the BBC.
1932 Autumn
Gilbert, Frances and Dorothy travel through France, visiting Avignon, Nimes and Perignon.
1932 November
Publishes Christendom in Dublin, a brief collection of essays on his impressions of the Eucharistic Congress.
1932
Publishes Chaucer, a lesson in history, theology, literature and art, but also a tribute from one great humorist to another; publishes New Poems, a compilation of recent poems.
1933 January
Second series of radio broadcasts on the BBC, in which he gives his views on architecture.
1933 March
Publishes All I Survey, a new selection of articles from his contribution to the Illustrated London New.
1933 March 21
Tenth anniversary of G. K.’s Weekly.
1933 Spring
Blanche Blogg and Marie Louise Chesterton fall ill nearly at the same time; both will die during this year.
1933
Publishes St Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, a book written by request of Hodder & Stoughton; he started writing it in the spring of the same year; it’s a brilliant sketch of the life and thinking of Thomas Aquinas, and it earned praise from distinguished writers such as Etienne Gibson, Jacques Martain and Anton Pegis, who considered it the best book ever written about the 13th century Dominican.
1934 Early
He suffers from jaundice in the first months of the year.
1934 May 22
Pope Pius XI bestows on him the honor of Knight of the Order of Saint George.
1934 Summer
Gilbert, Frances and Dorothy travel to Rome, and in the Vatican they thank Pope Pius Xi for the honor bestowed to him; Gilbert feels unwell in Syracuse while preparing to go to the Holy Land, and they decide to rest for five weeks before returning to England via Malta.
1934
Publishes Avowals and Denials, a new collection of thirty-six essays from his weekly column Our Note Book for the Illustrated London News, which look back on the things he has always believed in and the thing in which he has not; two years before his death, Chesterton’s always cheerful voice begins to seem worn out; he is accused of antisemitism; publishes GK’s: A Miscellany of the First 500 Issues of G. K.’s Weekly, with an introduction by himself.
1935 Spring
Trip to Catalonia via France, a second stay in which they spent several weeks in Barcelona and Sitges; they travelled through the South of France towards Italy; in Florence he gave a lecture at the Maggio Fiorentino; on the return trip to England they visited Switzerland and Belgium.
1935 September
Publishes The Well and the Shallows; a few years after his conversion he started writing articles for Catholic reviews on both sides of the Atlantic; the main body of these essays were republished in The Thing: Why I am a Catholic (1929) and the aforementioned The Well and the Shadows, a collection of essays, more formal than the previous ones, of which André Maurois pointed out the stylistic composure.
1935
Publishes The Way of the Cross, a book by painter Frank Brangwyn with texts from Chesterton accompanying the images of the Stations of the Cross; publishes The Scandal of Father Brown, containing nine short stories, the fifth and last book featuring the priest detective; publishes Stories, Essays and Poems, a selection of writings and poems; Chesterton and Bertrand Russell held a BBC radio debate on Who Should Raise Your Children?
1936 May 5
Due to his ill health, Gilbert travels to the south of France together with Frances and Dorothy, where they visit Lisieux and Lourdes.
1936 June 14
Gilbert dies at Top Meadow; the funeral procession covers the distance to St Theresa’s Catholic Church, where Mass is heard; he’s buried in Shepherds Lane Cemetery (Beaconsfield)..
1936 June 27
The Requiem Mass is celebrated in Westminster Cathedral (London), in which Ronald Knox reads a panegyric; in view of Chesterton’s death, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII, sends a telegram to the people of England on behalf of Pope Pius XI.
1936
Publishes Autobiography, the last pages of which he had dictated to Dorothy at the beginning of the year; it is a special book which describes Chesterton in his own words, and one which he preferred not to write and only did so at the insistence of friends and admirers; As I Was Saying comes out, Chesterton’s last book not published posthumously; it’s a collection of articles from the Illustrated London News, whose title suggests he’s continuing a conversation he has maintained with us all the time; funny observations on our world, surprising ideas and prophetic proclamations are all present; still fourteen more books will appear posthumously.
1938 December 12
Frances Chesterton dies; she is buried with Gilbert in Sheperds Lane Cemetery (Beaconsfield).
1952 febrer 6
Fr John O’Connor dies while at the Sisters of Mercy Nursing Home, in Horsforth (Leeds).
1988 September 8
Dorothy Collins dies; she is buried in Sheperds Lane Cemetery (Beaconsfield), together with Gilbert and Frances.

(*) Chronology in progress