In this imaginatively selected, beautifully illustrated treasury of great prose and poetry, a distinguished novelist, author of Green Dolphin Street and The Scent of Water, has gathered together the fruits of a very personal search for the literature of the world most able to help in meeting the challenges of life, and to console in time of trouble.

The result is a uniquely moving collection of both famous and little-known pieces from writings through the ages. Included are selections from the Gospel according to St. John, from Socrates, from Gerard Manley Hopkins, from Rupert Brooke, from Dylan Thomas, from Robert Browning, Shelly, T.S. Eliot, and from many other writers of different styles and attitudes. Like Miss Goudge's own novels, the selections here gathered possess an almost mystical power to strengthen in times of tribulation, to enlarge our capacity for joy, for faith, for delight in the world about us, and to touch and restore the soul.

A Book of Comfort is Elizabeth Goudge's treasury of the writings that have meant most to her, collected over a lifetime of reading. It is a book to give and to own; a book to be read and be comforted by for years to come.

From the dust jacket