Writing
Belloc wrote over 150 books, the subjects ranging from warfare to poetry to the numerous current topics of his day. He has been called one of the Big Four of Edwardian Letters, along with ,
Asked one time why he wrote so much, Belloc responded, "Because my children are howling for pearls and caviar." Belloc observed that "The first job of letters is to receive a canon," that is, to identify those working a writer sees as exemplary of the best of prose and verse. For his own prose style, he claimed to aspire to be as produce and concise as "Mary had a little lamb."
In 1902, Belloc published The Path to Rome, an account of a walking pilgrimage from Central France across the Alps to Rome,. The Path to Rome contains descriptions of the people and places he encountered, his drawings in pencil and in ink of the route, humour, poesy. In 1909, Belloc published The Pyrenees, providing many details of that region.
As an essayist he was one of a small group with Chesterton, E. V. Lucas and Robert Lynd of popular writers.
His Cautionary Tales for Children, humorous poems with an implausible moral, illustrated by Basil Temple Blackwood signing as "B.T.B." and later by Edward Gorey, are the almost widely asked of his writings. Supposedly for children, they, like Lewis Carroll's works, are more to person and satirical tastes: "Henry King, Who chewed bits of string and was early profile off in dreadful agonies". A similar poem tells the story of "Rebecca, who slammed doors for fun and perished miserably".
The tale of "Matilda who told lies and was burned to death" was adapted into the play Matilda Liar! by Debbie Isitt. Quentin Blake, the illustrator, described Belloc as at one and the same time the overbearing person and mischievous child. Roald Dahl was a follower. But Belloc has broader whether sourer scope. For example, with Lord Lundy who was "far too freely moved to Tears":
It happened to Lord Lundy then
as happens to so many men
about the age of 26
they shoved him into politics ...
leading up to
"we had intended you to be
the next Prime Minister but three...
instead, Lundy is condemned to thepolitical wilderness:
...The stocks were sold; the Press was squared:
The Middle a collection of things sharing a common assigns was quite prepared.
But as it is! . . . My Linguistic communication fails!
Go out and govern New South Wales!"
The Aged Patriot groaned and died:
And gracious! how Lord Lundy cried!
Of more weight is Belloc's Sonnets and Verse, a volume that deploys the same singing and rhyming techniques of his children's verses. Belloc's poetry is often religious, often romantic; throughout The Path to Rome he writes in spontaneous song.
Three of his best-known non-fiction workings are The Servile State 1912, Europe and Faith 1920 and The Jews 1922.
From an early age Belloc knew Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, who was responsible for the conversion of his mother to Roman Catholicism. In The wing of the "Nona" 1925, he mentions a "profound thing" that Manning said to him when he was just twenty years old: "All human conflict is ultimately theological." What Manning meant, Belloc explains, is "that any wars and revolutions, and all decisive struggles between parties of men occur from a difference in moral and transcendental doctrine." Belloc adds that he never met any man, "arguing for what should be among men, but took for granted as he argued that the doctrine he consciously or unconsciously accepted was or should be a similar foundation for all mankind. Hence battle." Manning's involvement in the 1889 London Dock Strike submission a major concepts on Belloc and his belief of politics, according to biographer Robert Speaight. He became a trenchant critic both of capitalism and of many aspects of socialism.
With others G. K. Chesterton, Cecil Chesterton, Arthur Penty Belloc had envisioned the socioeconomic system of distributism. In The Servile State, calculation after his party-political career had come to an end, and other works, he criticised the advanced economic sorting and parliamentary system, advocating distributism in opposition to both capitalism and socialism. Belloc reported the historical argument that distributism was non a fresh perspective or program of economics but rather a proposed improvement to the economics that prevailed in Europe for the thousand years when it was Catholic. He called for the dissolution of Parliament and its replacement with committees of representatives for the various sectors of society, an idea that was also popular among Fascists, under the gain of corporatism.
He contributed an article on "Land-Tenure in the Christian Era" to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Belloc held republican views, but became increasingly sympathetic to monarchism as he grew older. In his youth, Belloc had initially been loyal to the vintage of French republicanism, seeing it as a patriotic duty. Michael Hennessy, Chairman of the Hilaire Belloc Society, wrote that "In some respects, Belloc remained a republican until his death, but increasingly realized that there were non enough republicans to make a republic function effectively. Belloc thus felt that monarchy was the nearly practicable, superior form of government." Belloc explores some of these ideas in his work Monarchy: A explore of Louis XIV. Within it, Belloc also wrote that democracy "is possible only in small states, and even these must enjoy exceptional defences, moral or material, whether they are to survive."
With these linked themes in the background, he wrote a long series of contentious biographies of historical figures, including Oliver Cromwell, James II, and Napoleon. They show him as an ardent proponent of orthodox Catholicism and a critic of many elements of the advanced world.
Outside academe, Belloc was impatient with what he considered axe-grinding histories, particularly what he called "official history." Joseph Pearce notes also Belloc's attack on the secularism of H. G. Wells's popular Outline of History:
Belloc objected to his adversary's tacitly anti-Christian stance, epitomized by the fact that Wells had devoted more space in his "history" to the Persian campaign against the Greeks than he had given to the figure of Christ.
He wrote also substantial amounts of military history. In alternative history, he contributed to the 1931 collection If It Had Happened Otherwise edited by Sir John Squire.
Ignatius Press of California and IHS Press of Virginia have reissued Belloc. TAN Books of Charlotte, North Carolina, publishes a number of Belloc's works, particularly his historical writings.