This electronic edition of the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (The Story of a Soul) includes much, but not all, of the content of Soeur Therese of Lisieux (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1912; 8th ed., 1922), edited by Rev. T.N. Taylor. All the translated writings and sayings of St. Therese contained in that book are in this electronic edition, including the autobiography as well as "Counsels and Reminiscences," letters, and selected poems. Also included are the preface by Cardinal Bourne, the prologue relating Therese's parentage and birth, and the epilogue describing her final illness, her death, and related events. Not included are the illustrations, the list of illustrations, accounts of favors attributed to the intercession of St. Therese, documents related to her beatification, and some other material not written by her.

Footnotes have been re-numbered sequentially in each chapter. They are presented at the end of each chapter, and some have been slightly modified for ease of reference. A few footnotes, referring to page numbers in the original, have been modified or omitted. Citations to the Psalms, many of which were numbered differently in Catholic Bibles of St. Therese's time than they commonly are today, have the "new" number in brackets next to the "old" number from the original -- e.g., "Psalm 22[23]:1-4." Footnote numbers are shown in brackets, e.g., "[1]."

The original page headers, page numbering, disclaimer of any intention to anticipate the judgment of the Church in calling St. Therese a "saint" before her canonization, and other extraneous matter, which were deemed suitable for a printed book in 1922 but not for an e-book in 2005, are not here. The French "oe" ligature, in words such as "soeur," is not available in the standard ISO-8859-1 character set, and obviously is represented here by the two-letter combination "oe." Italics are represented by underscores at the beginning and end, like this. The first word of each chapter is not set in all caps as it was in the printed book. A few obvious typographical errors have been corrected, with the changes in brackets, e.g., "[s]he" for "the" in Chapter IX. All else, including capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and British spelling, is intended to reflect the content of the eighth edition of Soeur Therese of Lisieux. If it does not, the fault is that of the transcriber (me, David McClamrock).