G. K. Chesterton is considered by many informed readers to be one of the great writers of the English language in the twentieth century. A prolific author of astonishing creativity, he published dozens of books (including novels, biographies, and social, literary, and religious criticism), hundreds of short stories and poems, and thousands of essays. Though nowadays perhaps most often remembered as the author of the well-known Father Brown detective stories, he was a public intellectual in the media of his time. His enduring cultural significance is found in his sometimes prescient, sometimes naïve critiques of modernist ideas, and in his vigorous, witty defence of the intellectual respectability of traditional Christian doctrines.

"Orthodoxy", Chesterton´s autobiography explaining his journey to faith, is one of his most important books where he presents his effervescent apologia pro vita sua.
"Orthodoxy" is meant to be a companion to Heretics, and to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of the book because it merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy. This book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a riddle and its answer.