Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc (Joseph Hilaire Pierre Belloc) , 1870-1953, English author, b. France. He became a British subject in 1902, and from 1906 to 1910 was a Liberal member of Parliament for South Salford. Poet, essayist, satirist, and historian, he wrote from the Roman Catholic viewpoint. Among his works are The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896), The Path to Rome (1902), Marie Antoinette (1910), The Jews (1922), The Cruise of the Nona (1925), and Napoleon (1922). He was a close friend of G. K. Chesterton and with him founded the New Witness, a weekly political newspaper. Christened "the Chesterbelloc" by G. B. Shaw, the two were the inventors and propagators of distributism, a medieval, anticapitalist, and anti-Fabian socialist philosophy.

Belloc, Hilaire ( Joseph Hilary Pierre) (1870–1953), born in France, of part-French Catholic ancestry. He was Liberal MP for Salford from 1906–9 and in 1910. His books of verse include A Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896), Verses and Sonnets (1896), Cautionary Tales (1907), and Sonnets and Verse (1923). His most celebrated serious lyrics are probably ‘Tarantella’ (‘Do you remember an inn, Miranda?’) and ‘Ha'nacker Hill’. He was an active journalist and literary editor of the Morning Post (1906–10) and founder of the Eye-witness (1911). His books attacking and satirizing Edwardian society (some with G. K. Chesterton) include Pongo and the Bull (1910) and The Servile State (1912); of his books propounding Catholicism, Europe and Faith (1920) was well regarded. His biographies include Danton (1899), Marie Antoinette (1909), Cromwell (1927), and Charles II (1940); and his histories The French Revolution (1911) and a substantial History of England (1915). The Cruise of the Nona (1925) contains many of his most personal reflections. His most successful book of travel, The Path to Rome (1902), which was published with his own sketches and illustrations, is an account of a journey which he undertook, largely on foot, from the valley of the Moselle to Rome; other travel books include Sussex (1906) and The Pyrenees (1909). Of the novels Mr Clutterbuck's Election (1908), The Girondin (1911), The Green Overcoat (1912), and Belinda (1928) were among the most highly regarded. The last is a brief and highly individual love story, related with romantic feeling and much irony.