Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Hardy Har

For those who like to say that Chesterton never made an enemy, there is the fact of Thomas Hardy's very last literary work. In the final days before his death in 1928, Hardy dictated what biographer Robert Gittings describes as "two virulent, inept, and unworthy satirical jingles" directed at Chesterton and George Moore—Hardy's "two most hated critics." [Thomas Hardy's Later Years, Boston, 1978, p. 211]

1 comment:

Dr. Thursday said...

Shaw put a parody of GKC into a version of his Back To Methuselah. The character was called "Immenso Champernoon".

(This is mentioned in the Ignatius Press footnote to GKC's The Temptation of St. Anthony which is a kind of payback to Shaw, Wells, and others. (See Collected Works Vol 11 page 207)