The Stone Book Quartet is a collection of stories by Alan Garner about his family spanning over a century, which was awarded the Phoenix Award in 1996. These are:
- The Stone Book
- Tom Fobble's Day
- Granny Reardun
- The Aimer Gate
While seemingly in modern English, the language of the book is poetic and draws on the patterns and rhythms of local Cheshire dialect. Garner's great grandfather was a stonemason, and The Stone Book describes his initiating his daughter into the secrets of his craft high on the steeple of a church he is helping to build. When she asks for a book, he shows her an older writing - his own stonemason's emblem carved in rock deep within Alderley Edge and dating back countless centuries.
Relative to the internal timeline, the ordering is The Stone Book, Granny Reardun, The Aimer Gate, Tom Fobble's Day.
Famous quotes containing the words stone and/or book:
“I passed a tomb among green shades
Where seven anemones with down-dropped heads
Wept tears of dew upon the stone beneath.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“O God, that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)