Hello there.

I've been looking for the answer to this question for a while now but can't seem to find it, so I'm hoping someone on here can help me.

I'm writing up a thesis in Latex, and really like the \frontmatter, \mainmatter and \backmatter ability when using the "book" environment. However I need to add an abstract and the \begin{abstract} environment is undefined when creating a "book". If I change to a "report" however, I lose the functionality of the *matter terms.

So what I really need to know is: is there a simple method of including an abstract in a "book" and have it formatted the same as it would be in a "report"? (i.e. centered vertically and horizontally with an 'abstract' heading)

Thanks for any help! First post on stackoverflow after reading for months!