The Ballad and the Source is a novel by Rosamond Lehmann, first published in 1944 by Collins in the UK.

[1] Set in Edwardian England, the book deals with the relationship between Rebecca, a young girl, and Sibyl Jardine, a complicated and domineering elderly woman.

Contemporary reviewers compared the novel to the work of Henry James, though the book's feminism was then considered unfashionable.

[2] Lehmann returned to the character of Rebecca in her last novel, A Sea-Grape Tree (1976), which follows her as an adult dealing with betrayal by a married lover.

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