Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

Spring in a Shropshire Abbey has eighteen illustrations, including a frontispiece of Wenlock Abbey in 1778, from an engraving after a drawing by Paul Sandby, R.A. The dedication is to dear Mrs. Boyle (E. V. B.), in affectionate and grateful memory of many charming talks that the writer and she had together one sunny winter in the far South. The contents for the chapter January list, among others, A day in the heart of winter, My books, my dogs, My daughter Bess, and Flowers from Mentone.

The text says Bess has a Shropshire nurse, Winifrede Milner, who has unfortunately an invincible objection to Célestine, in fact to foreigners of all kinds. An old man tells how the bull, a proper beast, was baited three times: first at the Horse Inn, then at Lincoln Hill, and lastly on Madeley Wood Green. Bess and the writer are on the Wenlock station platform, surrounded by masses of boxes, with Mouse, a label tied to her collar, watching them intently.