El Libro de la Vida se redactó en periodos sucesivos y con finalidades distintas, aunque el periodo de redacción definitivo suele situarse entre 1562-1566. La Santa lo escribió por mandato y bajo la dirección de sus confesores, e iba dirigido a un círculo religioso reducido. El Libro comprende hasta sus 50 años de edad y lo escribe durante una de las etapas más difíciles de su vida. En los primeros capítulos Santa Teresa aporta gran cantidad de información autobiográfica sobre su vida familiar, su infancia, y su ingreso en la vida religiosa. A lo largo del libro hay otros episodios de este tipo: sus referencias al Santo fray Pedro de Alcántara, a quien conoció personalmente, y el proce...

Conceptions of Divine Love was written in 1577. St. Teresa wrote this with the idea of explaining certain words found in the Book of Canticles. When her confessor read the title of her work, he ordered her to immediately burn it, which, of course, she did. But one of her nuns had copied the first seven chapters, which was then published in 1612. Here, Father John Dalton has translated only four of those chapters in 1852.

Saint Teresa of Ávila, also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada, (March 28, 1515, at Gotarrendura (Ávila), Old Castile, Spain – October 4, 1582, at Alba de Tormes, Salamanca, Spain) was a prominent Spanish mystic, Carmelite nun, and writer of the Counter Reformation. She was a reformer of the Carmelite Order and is considered to be, along with John of the Cross, a founder of the Discalced Carmelites. In 1970 she was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI.

El Camino de Perfección (trans.: The Way of Perfection) is a method for making progress in the contemplative life written by St. Teresa of Ávila for the sisters of her reformed convent of the Carmelite Order (Discalced). St. Teresa was a major figure of the Catholic Reformation in 16th Century Spain.