Collected Poems of St Thérèse of Lisieux / Translated by Alan Bancroft

St. Thérèse of Lisieux is one of the best-loved saints of the Church. Her writings are amongst the most popular works of spirituality that the world has ever known. Admitted to Carmel in 1888 at the age of fifteen, she only lived nine more years. St. Thérèse wrote with utter simplicity, and yet, because of her outstanding spiritual discernment, John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church.

Her gifts as a poet, however, have remained largely unknown to English-speaking readers—here, for the first time ever, are English translations of no fewer than seventy-two poems of this remarkable Carmelite nun, more than in any previously published book: translations of all sixty-two of the poems in Un Cantique d’Amour, together with ten verse passages from her plays, the recreation pieuses. Also, these translations have now all been made from the fully authentic original texts of Thérèse’s manuscripts.

Scholarly and sensitive in his interpretation, Alan Bancroft captures the intelligence and fervor of Thérèse’s verse. These poems—like her prose writing—celebrate her joyous surrender to the glory of God.