Letters, Swiss Letters and Alpine Poems, and Lilies and Shamrocks

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