{"title":"Mary Webb","description":"Mary Gladys Webb (1881-1927) was an English romance novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people whom she knew. Her novels have been successfully dramatized, most notably the film Gone to Earth in 1950 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger based on the novel of the same title. The novels are thought to have inspired the famous parody Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons.","products":[{"product_id":"precious-bane-paperback","title":"Precious Bane - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eMary Webb\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eStanley Baldwin\u003c\/b\u003e (Introduction by)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the early 19\u003csup\u003eth\u003c\/sup\u003e century, young Prue and Gideon Sarn live with their mother on a farm around a mere deep in the Shropshire countryside. Their life is full to brimming with the agricultural round, the seasons dominating. Also crucial is all the lore which underlies life - meanings deduced from natural events, modified to some extent by the dicta of the church.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrue is quietly aware of one essential difference in herself - she has a harelip, which her mother tells her sadly is the result of a hare having crossed her path when pregnant. Prue accepts that she will not have the fruitful life of love and children that a young woman of those times could expect. Gideon, after the death of their father, has shown his determined nature by enlisting Prue and their mother in an exhausting round of farmwork. His aim is to make a fortune quickly and buy a much grander house he has spied nearby, with all the servants and status that go with it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrue's admiration of her brother's strength and handsomeness does not waver, even when he is too single-minded to be truly kind. The daughter of their near neighbours, Jancis Beguildy, sees him similarly, but with added romantic attachment, which is returned by Gideon. Jancis' father is looked upon with great suspicion by the local community as a waker of demons and potential wizard, but, true to her all-welcoming nature, Prue is happy to go there regularly for lessons in reading and writing. On one visit there she also sees the new local weaver, Kester Woodseaves, who, like Gideon, is extraordinarily strong and attractive. Though she sees any romance as impossible due to her blemish, Prue is privately completely captured by the idea of him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrue and Gideon have the malleable ideas of those attached to the land, where strict church morality is seen as sometimes too restrictive and unreasonable, as long as the intentions of any misdoer are good. Jancis' father has taken against Gideon, for reasons which go back to a feud with their own father. When the physical nature of Gideon and Jancis' relationship prior to their marriage is revealed, something snaps in Beguildy. His revengeful action ushers in enormous disturbance - the tensions surrounding the Sarns and Beguildys in the local community, which had been sleeping, are awoken with savagery. Their quiet lives are devastated, their failings magnified, the impacts reverberating in ever growing circles of disaster. At the centre of the melée, it will take all her strength for Prue to survive.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn her last completed novel, first published in 1924, Mary Webb reached for two key differences from her prior work: a setting further back in time, and the use of a first-person narrator, bringing the beginnings of a new and extraordinary lucidity and immediacy to her already poetic prose. \u003cem\u003ePrecious Bane\u003c\/em\u003e was a harbinger of brilliance to come, sadly cut short by Webb's tragic death.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 290\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.65 x 8 x 5 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e September 25, 2024\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50101544878303,"sku":"9780645751918","price":20.09,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/YsEboTwk_39780645751918.webp?v=1782999100"},{"product_id":"precious-bane-paperback-1","title":"Precious Bane - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eBorn at the time of Waterloo in the wild country of Shropshire, Prudence Sarn is a wild, passionate girl, cursed with a hare lip -- her 'precious bane'. Cursed for it, too, by the superstitious people amongst whom she lives. Prue loves two things: the remote countryside of her birth and, hopelessly, Kester Woodseaves, the weaver. The tale of how Woodseaves gradually discerns Prue's true beauty is set against the tragic drama of Prue's brother, Gideon, a driven man who is out of harmony with the natural world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51406406156511,"sku":"9780268015381","price":21.6,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/Az7gHUPUHt9780268015381.webp?v=1789570517"},{"product_id":"the-spring-of-joy-a-little-book-of-healing-paperback","title":"The Spring of Joy: A Little Book of Healing - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMary Webb was passionately devoted to revealing nature in all of its expressions and forms. She was diagnosed with Graves' disease at the age of 20, and in times of recovery she early noticed that her love of nature sped her healing. She also, in these sensitive times of contemplation and struggle, saw the natural world more tenderly and luminously; the urgencies of life were clearer.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Spring of Joy\u003c\/em\u003e collects together a group of exquisite essays of appreciation, written with the idea of succouring 'the weary and wounded in the battle of life.' They are an extraordinary record of a woman's empathy, not only for the beauty, colour, form, delicacy and majesty of the natural world, but also for her fellow human beings who suffer.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51459086745823,"sku":"9780994430663","price":14.33,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/lQlvzJTrtM9780994430663.webp?v=1790362469"},{"product_id":"gone-to-earth-paperback","title":"Gone to Earth - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Once again it rang out, and at its awful reiteration the righteous men and the hunt ceased to be people of any class or time or creed, and became creatures swayed by one primeval passion - fear. They crouched and shuddered like beaten dogs as the terrible cry once more roused the shivering echoes: 'Gone to earth! Gone to earth!'\" Mary Webb's second novel, first published in 1917, is one of the most unusual of the twentieth century. It is strikingly modern in some of its themes, but is also markedly a rural fable. It is as if a west country medieval storyteller had whispered in the ear of Thomas Hardy or Emily Bronte just as they were spinning a tale... Hazel, the lonely young daughter of harpist, beeman and coffin-maker Abel Woodus, has been brought up very loosely by him after the death of his gypsy wife. He is a cool and distant man; their isolated tumbledown cottage deep in the Shropshire countryside rarely sees a visitor. Hazel has turned instead to nature, and particularly animals, as her guide to life and love. She has an intense natural feeling for any creature that suffers, and looks at the outer world as inimical to her and those she cares for, in particular her best friend, Foxy, a young vixen she has rescued. But Hazel is growing older, and men are beginning to notice her stormy youthful beauty. Into her superstitious, naïve, uncomprehending and fearful mindscape come harbingers of the disturbing outer world. First her cousin Albert is shaken when he sees her again after a long lapse. Then, on the overnight walking journey home from Albert's house in the big town, Hazel loses her way, and is taken up by Jack Reddin, a sensualist local squire who cannot believe his luck in coming across her. She escapes his clutches in the nick of time with the help of his sour manservant, but Jack is determined to find her and claim her for his own, scouring the countryside asking after her. Still managing to evade him, Hazel attends a local glee or choir-meeting where her father harps and she sings, and it is there that yet another man is astonished by what he sees. This is Edward Marston, the tender young minister of a small chapel on a steep hill, called locally God's Little Mountain. The scene is now set for a titanic struggle between lustful Jack and gentle Edward over Hazel, where all their frailties and failings will tell terribly. Hazel is caught in a bewildering trap of desire and pain in which her changeable, independence-loving, wild young heart is tested to its limit. With the intense, spiralling, atmospheric prose of a folktale, Mary Webb unforgettably tells an earthy story of fear, desire, love, and violence both spiritual and physical, where the respectable world's assumptions are severely challenged by one of life's originals. Reviewing it in the Times Literary Supplement on its first publication, Rebecca West said 'She is a genius, and I shouldn't mind wagering that she is going to be the most distinguished writer of our generation.'\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67575249109215,"sku":"9780992523442","price":20.09,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/TXM36bgJye9780992523442.webp?v=1790373208"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/mary-webb.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}