The title of the novel was taken from the last line of the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem "Ode to the West Wind": "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?".

[2] Sabre enlists during World War I, he is badly injured, and he returns to his loveless marriage to his shrewish wife Mabel.

If Winter Comes presents sensational and controversial subjects of emotional adultery, unwed motherhood and suicide, but tempers them with moral, social and religious idealism.

[2] The character of Rev Cyril Boom Bagshaw was a satire of the flamboyant Reverend Basil Bourchier.

[5] If Winter Comes made the Publishers Weekly best seller list for 1922,[6] and was the best-selling book in the United States for all of that year.