'I beg anyone who reads this account to bear in mind, for the love of the Lord, how wicked my life has been'

Born in the Castilian town of Ávila in 1515, Teresa entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation when she was twenty-one. Tormented by illness, doubts and self-recrimination, she gradually came to recognize the power of prayer and contemplation - her spiritual enlightenment was intensified by many mystical experiences, including the piercing of her heart by a spear of divine love. She went on to found seventeen Carmelite monasteries throughout Spain, yet always denied her own saintliness. This frank account is one of the great stories of a religious life and, after Don Quixote, Spain's most widely read prose classic.

Translated with an Introduction by J. M. Cohen