If one googles on G.K. Chesterton, one of the hits on the first page says 'Who is this guy and why haven't I heard of him?'. It will refer you to a short piece on www.chesterton.org by Dale Ahlquist, the president of the American Chesterton Society. You will read a short introduction, which ends with a discussion why so few people actually heard of Chesterton.
As a recent Chesterton enthusiast, I started thinking about the various ways I could have heard about Chesterton. I did notice a 'Father Brown' series on television some years ago, but I never got around to actually watching it. I did buy a book with 'Father Brown' stories one day, but never got around to reading it. I heard that C.S. Lewis was influenced by several books, but never took the trouble of checking them out. I even heard the famous quote 'Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried'. But somehow I never connected all these pointers together. I wonder how many people do the same and just miss out on Chesterton's writings...
In the end, it was the books recommended by ccel that pointed me to 'Orthodoxy'; it was mentioned together with some classics as Augustine's 'Confessions', Bunyan's 'The pilgrim's progress', and Thomas a Kempis' 'The imitation of Christ'. After reading 'Orthodoxy', I started 'The everlasting man'. And when I found out that Chesterton did not only write apologetics, but also detective stories and essays about various topics, I was inspired to make a study of his writings, and to find out what they have to say to me today.
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