Fiction · 1908
The Man Who Was Thursday
A Nightmare
Gabriel Syme is a poet who has become a policeman, recruited into a secret force meant to fight anarchism with philosophy as much as with pistols. His first assignment gets him elected, within a single night, to the general council of the anarchists themselves — as their representative for Thursday. Every other day of the week turns out to have a secret behind it too.
G. K. Chesterton published The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare in 1908, and the subtitle is accurate: it moves like a chase novel and ends like one, but its logic is a dream's. He prefaced it with a long poem to his friend Edmund Clerihew Bentley, remembering the philosophical despair of their school years and the faith they found their way back to — the book's real subject, underneath the disguises.
Each of the anarchist council's other days — Monday through Sunday — turns out to be someone, and something, other than what Thursday first supposes. Bibliomancer publishes the novel complete, dedication included.
Contents
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Chapter I — The Two Poets of Saffron Park
- Chapter II — The Secret of Gabriel Syme
- Chapter III — The Man Who Was Thursday
- Chapter IV — The Tale of a Detective
- Chapter V — The Feast of Fear
- Chapter VI — The Exposure
- Chapter VII — The Unaccountable Conduct of Professor de Worms
- Chapter VIII — The Professor Explains
- Chapter IX — The Man in Spectacles
- Chapter X — The Duel
- Chapter XI — The Criminals Chase the Police
- Chapter XII — The Earth in Anarchy
- Chapter XIII — The Pursuit of the President
- Chapter XIV — The Six Philosophers
- Chapter XV — The Accuser
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1874–1936 · Modern
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was born in Kensington, London, and worked most of his life as a journalist and essayist, writing for the Daily News and the Illustrated London News. A big man — six foot four, known for his cape, crumpled hat and swordstick — he made his name with the essay collections Heretics (1905) and Orthodoxy (1908) and the novel The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), then created the detective-priest Father Brown in The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) and The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914). He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, in 1936.
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