SOURCE: “Detectives and Apocalypses,” in G. K. Chesterton, Twayne Publishers, 1974, pp. 120–44.

In the following essay, Clipper observes that Chesterton followed the Romantic school of early twentieth-century literature.

Describing the fiction of the 1890's, one critic states that “the sane tradition of English fiction by which a delicate balance was maintained between realism and romance rarely broke down.”¹ That delicate balance was upset, of course, with the new century when it became obvious that fiction-writers had gravitated into two camps: that of the Realists and Naturalists—Americans like Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser, English writers like Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, and young James Joyce; and a smaller group of “romancers” like Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, James Barrie, William Butler Yeats, and Chesterton himself.

As has been observed, Chesterton the critic had opted against “the vulgarity that is called realism,” wielding his prejudice most effectively against those...