by David L. Chalkley (Editor), Glen T. Wegge (Editor), Frances Ridley Havergal (Author)
Swiss Letters and Alpine Poems has letters written home to family when F.R.H. was visiting in Switzerland, posthumously compiled and published by her oldest sister, Miriam Crane. Letters by the Late Frances Ridley Havergal was compiled and published by another sister, Maria. The letters and other items in Lilies and Shamrocks show Frances' long, deep interest to support the Irish Society, a group ministering to the Irish in their own language. One or two of these letters will have you shaking with laughter (no one could write on paper how to imitate the sound of a donkey in the Swiss Alps as well as Frances), but they are all so good to read, truly and deeply edifying and enriching. These letters bring you very near to Frances, as if she were sitting three feet away and speaking directly to you, and they so exceptionally well show her, and her Lord's work in her mind and heart and life. Let me say a personal statement. Over the fifteen years of work to prepare the Havergal edition for publication, I have long thought and occasionally said that if I were free from work and could just read, I would want to start with the volume of Letters compiled by Maria. They are so very good.-David L. Chalkley
Author Biography
Frances Ridley Havergal's formal education ended when she was seventeen, with one term at a young women's school in Dusseldorf, Germany, yet she was a true scholar all her life. Fluent in German and French and nearly so in Italian, she read and loved the Reformers in Latin, German, and French. Knowledge was never an end in itself, only a means to know better her Lord and Saviour and to help to bring others to know Him. The Bible was her only Book, and she studied deeply the Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture, memorized nearly all the New Testament and large portions of the Old Testament, and loved the Author with all her being. Frances was brought to a saving knowledge of Christ when she was fourteen, and the rest of her life was consecrated to her Savior, the Lord Jesus. Keenly aware of her own sinfulness and inability, her sole desire was to please and glorify Him alone. Very finely gifted, she was truly diligent with her gifts: her poetry is among the finest Christian verse in the English language, after George Herbert; her prose works are deeply beneficial; a musician to the core, she left behind important compositions. Like her works, her life richly touched the ones near her and countless many who met or heard her. The Lord Jesus Christ was her alone, only beauty, and she glowed Him and His truth. These books are taken from the newly prepared edition of The Complete Works of Frances Ridley Havergal. Never wanting attention to herself, Frances' desire of her heart was for herself and for others to know her King, the Lord Jesus Christ. Her works are a gold-mine of help and enrichment. As her sister Maria, wrote, Knowing her intense desire that Christ should be magnified, whether by her life or in her death, may it be to His glory that in these pages she, being dead, "Yet speaketh !" David L. Chalkley and Glen T. Wegge, editors