For the millions of readers who love Elizabeth Goudge and the innumerable ones who love Christmas, A Christmas Book marks the memorable collaboration of a special writer and a very special season. Alive with the joy, expectancy, and wonder of the holiday, this Christmas anthology by the author of Green Dolphin Street and The Scent of Water includes two new long stories and selections with Yuletide settings from seven of her well-loved novels.
There is no subject on which this distinguished novelist writes with greater felicity and intensity of feeling. For the Christmas Miss Goudge celebrates is the old-fashioned holiday of the heart of love and goodwill to men. Unforgettably, she captures what she regards as the essential spirit of Christmas—a Christmas free of commercialism, false sophistication, and forced good spirits; a Christmas that finds us "astonished by an amazing visitation of joy, a singing in the soul, a new power of generosity or insight or endurance." And the nine lovely stories in this collection, full of the enchantment of goodness, reflect the influence of this tranquil joyous season on the lives of children and their parents. pastors and their congregations, orphans, tradesmen, traveling players, young lovers and old, all evoked with what one critic has called "that blend of fairytale grace. human warmth and spiritual feeling which only Elizabeth Goudge can contrive."
Whatever their setting, an ancient stable or a modern country house, these tales have in common the special magic that each new Christmas brings. A Christmas Book is a unique and glad gift of the spirit from Elizabeth Goudge to her many admirers.
Elizabeth Goudge has for many years been one of the world's best-selling authors. More than 11,000,000 copies of her books have been sold, and her work has been translated into many foreign languages. Among her better known works are The Dean's Watch, Gentian Hill, Pilgrim's Inn, The Heart of the Family, The Rosemary Tree, A Book of Comfort, and A Diary of Prayer. Miss Goudge lives today in a lovely seventeenth-century cottage in Oxfordshire, where she is currently at work on a historical novel,
Jacket design by ALBERT ORBAAN
Jacket decoration by FRITZ KREDEL
—from the dust jacket
Did you find this review helpful?