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:
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—Washington, DC, Policeman. quoted by P.J. O’Rourke in Rolling Stone (New York, 30 Nov. 1989)
“Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)