She designed a small cottage and engaged a local builder to build Spring Cottage. Here she would write on the veranda whilst enjoying the panoramic view and spent many happy hours exploring the spectacular landscape. There is a toposcope on Lyth Hill with a section on Mary Webb. What is the effect of local superstitions and folklore on the villagers’ trust in, and relationships with, one another? Mary was the eldest of six children and her earliest writing consisted of plays and stories to amuse her brothers and sisters.

Precious Bane by Mary Webb | Hachette UK

Mary's first published work had been a poem which appeared in the Shrewsbury Chronicle of October 18, 1907, about the Shrewsbury train disaster three days earlier. Her brother Kenneth Meredith had taken it in to the paper without her knowledge and it was published anonymously. This poem about the Shrewsbury railway disaster was published anonymously in the Shrewsbury Chronicle in 1907 – the future novelist's first published work.The gardener’s daughter was the only bridesmaid. Her father, speaking of Mary years later, said: 'She had a lovely disposition. I’ve never in all my days met anyone with a more loving heart.' There was a sigh from everybody then, like the wind in dry bents. Even the oxen by the gate, it seemed to me, sighed as they chewed the cud." She had an extraordinary eye for detail which she developed during her long walks in the landscape. She would sit for hours deep in thought observing and absorbing her environment, developing the themes for her work. Prue Sarn is an unlikely heroine, born with a facial disfiguration which the Fates have dictated will deny her love. But Prue has strength far beyond her handicap, and this woman, suspected of witchcraft by her fellow townspeople, rises above them all through an all-encompassing sweetness of spirit. There are numerous townspeople we come to know and there is the mother of Prue and Gideon, who only wants to be respected and some rest from her endless labors. And then there is the weaver, Kester Woodseaves, who besots the women who see him, and for whom Prue longs, despite knowing no such man would ever accept a “hare-shotten” woman.

Biography - Mary Webb Society Biography - Mary Webb Society

There's a love story here, and tragedy, and family. When she was a young girl the narrator expressed wonderment that her mother kept on telling her father, in moments of anguish--"Could I help it if the hare crossed my path? Could I help it?" I, too, found this puzzling not knowing what it meant until later it dawned on me: it has something to do with superstition, of which there were plenty during the old times, and what the girl-narrator is (though she be unconscious of it). Superstitions which, themselves, bring informative delight. In 1910 Mary met Henry Bertram Law Webb from Ironbridge ( a nephew of Captain Matthew Webb, the channel swimmer) Henry was a teacher who shared her interest in writing. They married in 1912. She and Henry first lived in Weston-super-Mare, but Mary was never really happy living away from Shropshire with which she felt a spiritual bond. At this time she began her first novel, The Golden Arrow, based in the Church Stretton area. The Webbs returned to Shropshire in 1914 where Mary completed The Golden Arrow(published 1916).Adapted in a 2004 play by Helen Edmundson, which was produced by Shared Experience at the Lyric Hammersmith and on tour; Edmundson was subsequently nominated for a TMA Award. [19] At the “love-spinning” for Gideon and Jancis—a gathering at which local women spin the wool that will be woven into fabric for the young couple—Prue first sees the weaver, Kester Woodseaves. He’s a powerfully handsome figure, but her attraction, the reader is told, transcends the physical. In those first mystical moments, he becomes her “master” and his image and spirit will infuse her thoughts in the hard days ahead. In time, Prue will save his life, and he will ultimately save hers. Rebecca West, a contemporary of Mary Webb, called her, simply, "a genius," and G. K. Chesterton, another contemporary, asserted: "the light in the stories . . . is a light not shining on the things but through them."

Precious Bane | Victorian England, Rural Life, Nature Precious Bane | Victorian England, Rural Life, Nature

The publication of The Golden Arrow in 1917 enabled them to move to Lyth Hill, Bayston Hill, a place she loved, where they bought a plot of land and built Spring Cottage. [10] Mary Webb Grave, Longden Road cemetery, Shrewsbury. And with a calm and grievous look he would go to his own place. Mostly, my Grandad used to say, Sin Eaters were such as had been Wise Men or layers of spirits, and had fallen on evil days. Or they were poor folk that had come, through some dark deed, out of the kindly life of men, and with whom none would trade, whose only food might oftentimes be the bread and wine that had crossed the coffin. In our time there were none left around Sarn. They had nearly died out, and they had to be sent for to the mountains. It was a long way to send, and they asked a big price, instead of doing it for nothing as in the old days. So Gideon said-- I thought maybe love was like that - a lot of coloured threads, and one master-thread of pure gold." Francis, Peter (2006). A Matter of Life and Death - The Secrets of Shrewsbury Cemetery. Logaston Press. p.41. ISBN 1-904396-58-5. We see Prue in contrast to her brother Gideon, who works relentlessly in pursuit of getting rich--the “precious bane” of the title.Before there were writers’ workshops to teach everyone to write the same— Show, don’t tell! Use all five senses! No prologues! No dialect!—from time to time a truly original voice would appear. Richard Llewellyns How Green Was My Valley springs to mind, with a rhythm, cadence, and vocabulary, sustained throughout the book, which created a unique world, and a worldview, in the reader’s mind. Books like that make me feel my brain’s expanding so fast it’s going to explode. Precious Bane is a book like that. Gideon, in contrast with good natured Prue, is as ambitious and severe as he is handsome. He works hard (and slaves Prue to do the same for him) to be wealthy and prosperous and his pride prevents him from marrying the girl he loves, fair Jancis, because he wants to be well-off before he gives himself that pleasure, not caring if others suffer because of his material whims. Why, it was only that I was your angel for a day," I said at long last. "A poor daggly angel, too".

Precious Bane - Mary Webb - Google Books Precious Bane - Mary Webb - Google Books

In the end, Webb’s is a story about punishment for all-consuming greed. Jancis Beguildy’s father, the local wizard who provides charms and snake-oil cures and who may be in league with the devil, is known to have held a long grudge against Old Sarn, and he has even less use for the man’s son, Gideon. Idle and amoral, Beguildy is motivated by lust for easy money. He believes he can get a better price for his beautiful daughter, Jancis, than Gideon is likely to give, and he is fully prepared to auction her off to the highest bidder. When Gideon sleeps with the girl to stake his claim to her, however, the young man cements his fate. Beguildy’s curses and revenge will deprive him of all he’s worked for. What mainly got me about this novel is Webb's capacity to transmit such a crude story in which guilt, hatred and prejudice get the worst of its characters, as if it was an innocent and sweet fable. And in that sense, the brutality of the morals which are trying to be taught become more evident and disturbing. Also the evident contrast between brother and sister, between evil and goodness: Prue's silent acceptance and her brother's endless thirst to yield power; her ability to be at ease with herself in spite of her faults versus Gideon's incapacity to accept his position in the world; her humble ways, his capricious goals. As if opposed poles inevitably attracted to each other. Yin and yang. Dark and light. Life and death. One can't exist without the other.Prue sees the landscape as “like a book” waiting to be read; “a riddle with no answer”. To what extent does the glory of landscape depend on its mystery? Are we less enchanted by the landscape now that we know more about it? Yet as I thought of Kester Woodseaves and what he had come to mean, I seemed to hear and see on this side and on that, in the dark woods, a sound and a gleam of the gathering of spring. There was a piping call in the oakwood, a bursting of purple in the treetops, a soft yellowing of celandine in the rookery.” Webb's first published writing was a five-verse poem, written on hearing news of the Shrewsbury rail accident in October 1907. Her brother, Kenneth Meredith, so liked the poem and thought it potentially comforting for those affected by the disaster that, without her knowledge, he took it to the newspaper offices of the Shrewsbury Chronicle, which printed the poem anonymously. Mary, who usually burnt her early poems, was appalled before learning that the newspaper had received appreciative letters from its readers. [5] [ bettersourceneeded]