An unpublished essay by the English writer and critic GK Chesterton will be published this week by the Strand Magazine.
Under its editor-in-chief, Andrew Gulli, the Strand has recently published unknown stories by Truman Capote, James M Cain and Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone. But the case of the lost Chesterton is different, if appropriately so given its author’s famous wit. It turns out the essay, The Historical Detective Story, wasn’t lost at all.
“The funny thing about this essay is that many people have known about it for a long time,” said Dale Ahlquist, president of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. “It’s just that they probably saw the manuscript in the special collections at the University of Notre Dame, and they just assumed it was known.