Johnston (1870-1936) was a novelist, suffragist and social advocate who became the first woman to top the bestseller lists in the 20th century. She achieved her greatest literary success with her historical fiction and her second and most famous novel To Have and to Hold (1900) broke existing publishing records. In her later years she became disillusioned with conventional religion and took an interest in mysticism, a theme she took up in this work published in 1920 and in two other novels.