Chesterton Institute Online Conference: "Collecting Chesterton: A Conversation with a Connoisseur"
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
About the event
The sincere love of books has nothing to do with cleverness or stupidity any more than any other sincere love," said G.K. Chesterton. "It is a quality of character, a freshness, a power of pleasure, a power of faith." Books exist primarily to be read, of course, but they may also be savored as things in themselves, full of history, personality, and quirky beauty. As the American author and journalist Vincent Starrett once said, "collecting books is a way of collecting happiness." There are few happier places than a private library.
The Norwegian scientist Geir Hasnes would agree. Over the course of many years as a bibliographer, he has acquired an unparalleled knowledge of Chesterton's enormous output, tracking down dates and places of publication with the zeal of a brilliant private detective. In the process, he has also assembled one of the greatest collections of Chestertoniana in the world today.
In this online conversation with Dr. Dermot Quinn, editor of The Chesterton Review, Mr. Hasnes will discuss the challenges and joys of his work as a bibliographer and show some items from his extraordinary collection. We invite you to join us for this conversation.
About the speakers
Geir Hasnes is Assistant professor of Engineering Cybernetics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Mr. Hasnes has been working on a comprehensive bibliography of G. K. Chesterton for which he was awarded the American Chesterton Society's Chesterton Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. He lives in Konsberg, Norway.
Dermot Quinn, D.Phil. is Professor of History at Seton Hall University and Editor of The Chesterton Review. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and New College, Oxford, where he was awarded a doctorate in 1986. He has written extensively on Chestertonian themes, has authored three books The Irish in New Jersey: Four Centuries of American Life (Rutgers University Press, 2004)(winner, New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance, Non-fiction Book of the Year, 2005); Patronage and Piety: The Politics of English Roman Catholicism, 1850-1900 (Stanford University Press/Macmillan, 1993) and Understanding Northern Ireland (Baseline Books, Manchester, UK, 1993 and many articles and reviews in the field of British and Irish history.
About the sponsors
The G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture is located at Seton Hall University, South Orange, N.J. Founded in 1974 by Father Ian Boyd, C. S. B., its purpose is to promote the thought of G. K. Chesterton and his circle and more broadly, to explore the application of Chestertonian ideas in the contemporary world. The Institute’s work consists of conferences, lecture series, research, and writing. The Chesterton Review, founded in 1974, has been widely praised both for its scholarship and for the quality of its writing. The journal was founded by Father Ian Boyd, C. S. B., and is edited by Dr. Dermot Quinn, includes a wide range of articles not only on Chesterton himself, but on the issues close to his heart in the work of other writers and in the modern world. It has devoted special issues to C. S. Lewis, George Bernanos, Hilaire Belloc, Maurice Baring, Christopher Dawson, Cardinal Manning, the Modernist Crisis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Fantasy Literature, and a Special Polish Issue. The Chesterton Review also publishes one annual issue in Spanish and an annual supplement in Portuguese and French. For information about the Institute or The Chesterton Review please contact [email protected] – website: www.shu.edu/go/chesterton
Categories: Faith and Service
