G. K. Chesterton

The Man Who Was Thursday

Name: The Man Who Was Thursday
Author: G. K. Chesterton

Mystery, Thriller and Adventure

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Language: English
First published: 1908
Reading time: 252 minutes
Chapters: 16 chapters

About this book

Gabriel Syme, a poet who has secretly joined a special squad of philosopher policemen, gets himself elected to the council of anarchists that plans to destroy the world.

Its seven members are named after the days of the week, and Syme becomes Thursday. But the council's huge and terrifying president, Sunday, seems to know everything. G. K. Chesterton subtitled his 1908 novel "a nightmare": it begins as a witty spy thriller and turns into something stranger and deeper. Read it for its comic chases, its dreamlike London and its puzzles about faith and doubt.

A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,\ Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.\ Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;\ The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;\ Round us in antic order their…

To Edmund Clerihew Bentley

About this edition

Source
Project Gutenberg (eBook #1695)
Text version
Project Gutenberg eBook #1695 (updated 5 February 2024), downloaded 7 November 2026. The title page, the contents list and an anonymous modern blurb ("A wild, mad, hilarious and profoundly moving tale") were not imported. Chesterton's dedicatory poem to Edmund Clerihew Bentley, printed in the first edition, is kept as the opening section; the 15 chapters are unchanged.
Category
Mystery, Thriller and Adventure
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