The Reformation · 1562–1565
The Book of Her Life
Libro de la Vida
Teresa of Ávila · 1515–1582
What it is
Written under obedience for her confessors, describing twenty years of unsatisfying prayer, then the transverberation, with constant nervous asides about her own unreliability.
Why it lasted
One of the great autobiographies, written by a woman who knew the Inquisition would read it and wrote anyway.
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below. The Library catalogues it; it does not host the text.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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