Mary Webb
Encyclopedia
Mary Webb was an English
romantic novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire
countryside and among Shropshire characters and people which she knew. Her novels have been successfully dramatized, most notably the film Gone to Earth
in 1950 by Michael Powell
and Emeric Pressburger
. They inspired the famous parody Cold Comfort Farm
.
village of Leighton, 8 miles (13 km) southeast of Shrewsbury
. Her father was a schoolteacher, who inspired his daughter with his own love of literature and the local countryside. On her mother's side, she was descended from a family related to Sir Walter Scott. Mary loved to explore the countryside around her home, and developed a gift of detailed observation and description, of both people and places, which infuses her poetry and prose.
At the age of 20, she developed symptoms of Graves' disease
, a thyroid
disorder (which resulted in bulging protuberant eyes and throat goitre
), which caused ill health throughout her life and probably contributed to her early death. This affliction gave her great empathy with the suffering, and finds its fictional counterpart in the disfiguring harelip of Prue Sarn, the heroine of Precious Bane.
In 1912, she married Henry Webb, a teacher who at first supported her literary interests. They lived for a time in Weston-super-Mare
, before moving back to Mary's beloved Shropshire where they worked as market gardeners until Henry secured a job as a teacher at the Priory School.
The couple lived briefly in Rose Cottage near the village of Pontesbury
between the years 1914 and 1916, during which time she wrote The Golden Arrow. Her time in the village was commemorated in 1957 by the opening of the Mary Webb School.
The publication of The Golden Arrow in 1917 enabled them to move to Lyth Hill, Bayston Hill
a place Mary loved, buying a plot of land and building Spring Cottage.
In 1921, they bought a second property in London
hoping that she would be able to achieve greater literary recognition. This, however, did not happen. By 1927, she was suffering increasingly bad health, her marriage was failing, and she returned to Spring Cottage alone. She died at St Leonards on Sea, aged 46.
In her own lifetime, she won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse
for Precious Bane, but her output was not otherwise greatly esteemed. It was only after her death that Stanley Baldwin
, then Britain's Prime Minister, brought about her commercial success through his approbation; at a Literary Fund dinner in 1928, Baldwin referred to her as a neglected genius. Consequently her collected works were republished in a standard edition by Jonathan Cape
, becoming best sellers in the 1930s and running into many editions.
Her work is still widely admired. Three of her novels have been reprinted in recent times by Virago; these, like her writing in general, are notable for their descriptions of nature, and of human psychology.
Stella Gibbons
's 1932 novel Cold Comfort Farm
was a parody of Webb's work, as well as of other "loam and lovechild" writers like Sheila Kaye-Smith
and Mary E. Mann
and, further back, Thomas Hardy
. In a 1966 Punch
article, Gibbons observed:
The museum at the Tourist Information Centre in Much Wenlock
includes a lot of information on Mary Webb including a display of photographs of the filming of her novel Gone to Earth in 1950.
Her cottage on Lyth Hill can still be seen, but has been much extended and modernised.
with her harpist coffin-building father, but gets drawn into the world of normal human relationships through her great beauty, marrying a local church minister, but also becoming the object of the local fox-hunting squire's obsessive love for her. She casts herself down a mineshaft to escape, clutching her beloved fox. Gone to Earth
was filmed in 1950 by Michael Powell
and Emeric Pressburger
, starring Jennifer Jones as Hazel Woodus. However, it was later re-edited, shortened and retitled for its American release, and fell into relative obscurity. In 1985, the full 110-minute restored version was released by the National Film Archive, to great acclaim. A DVD is available.
Precious Bane is set in the years after the Battle of Waterloo
, and tells the story of Prue Sarn, disfigured by a harelip which her superstitious neighbours regard as a sign that she is a witch, and how she falls in love with a visiting weaver, Kester Woodseaves. It was first produced as a six part BBC
television drama series in 1957, starring Patrick Troughton
and Daphne Slater
. It was then adapted as a single play by French Television (ORTF) in 1968, with Dominique Labourier as Prue, Josep Maria Flotats as Gedeon and Pierre Vaneck as Kester; the director was Claude Santelli; the title was 'Sarn' (French title of the novel). TV channel TCM have shown this film several times in 2008. The most recent adaptation was as a television play by the BBC
in 1989, with Janet McTeer
as Prue, Clive Owen
as her brother Gideon, and John Bowe as Kester.
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
romantic novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
countryside and among Shropshire characters and people which she knew. Her novels have been successfully dramatized, most notably the film Gone to Earth
Gone to Earth (film)
Gone to Earth is a film by the British-based director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Jennifer Jones, David Farrar and Cyril Cusack and features Esmond Knight. The film was significantly changed for the American market by David O...
in 1950 by Michael Powell
Michael Powell (director)
Michael Latham Powell was a renowned English film director, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger...
and Emeric Pressburger
Emeric Pressburger
Emeric Pressburger was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a multiple-award-winning partnership known as The Archers and produced a series of classic British films, notably 49th Parallel , The...
. They inspired the famous parody Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm is a comic novel by Stella Gibbons, published in 1932. It parodies the romanticised, sometimes doom-laden accounts of rural life popular at the time, by writers such as Mary Webb...
.
Life
She was born Gladys Mary Meredith in the ShropshireShropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
village of Leighton, 8 miles (13 km) southeast of Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury is the county town of Shropshire, in the West Midlands region of England. Lying on the River Severn, it is a civil parish home to some 70,000 inhabitants, and is the primary settlement and headquarters of Shropshire Council...
. Her father was a schoolteacher, who inspired his daughter with his own love of literature and the local countryside. On her mother's side, she was descended from a family related to Sir Walter Scott. Mary loved to explore the countryside around her home, and developed a gift of detailed observation and description, of both people and places, which infuses her poetry and prose.
At the age of 20, she developed symptoms of Graves' disease
Graves' disease
Graves' disease is an autoimmune disease where the thyroid is overactive, producing an excessive amount of thyroid hormones...
, a thyroid
Thyroid
The thyroid gland or simply, the thyroid , in vertebrate anatomy, is one of the largest endocrine glands. The thyroid gland is found in the neck, below the thyroid cartilage...
disorder (which resulted in bulging protuberant eyes and throat goitre
Goitre
A goitre or goiter , is a swelling in the thyroid gland, which can lead to a swelling of the neck or larynx...
), which caused ill health throughout her life and probably contributed to her early death. This affliction gave her great empathy with the suffering, and finds its fictional counterpart in the disfiguring harelip of Prue Sarn, the heroine of Precious Bane.
In 1912, she married Henry Webb, a teacher who at first supported her literary interests. They lived for a time in Weston-super-Mare
Weston-super-Mare
Weston-super-Mare is a seaside resort, town and civil parish in the unitary authority of North Somerset, which is within the ceremonial county of Somerset, England. It is located on the Bristol Channel coast, south west of Bristol, spanning the coast between the bounding high ground of Worlebury...
, before moving back to Mary's beloved Shropshire where they worked as market gardeners until Henry secured a job as a teacher at the Priory School.
The couple lived briefly in Rose Cottage near the village of Pontesbury
Pontesbury
Pontesbury is a large village and civil parish in Shropshire and is approximately eight miles southwest of the county town of Shrewsbury. The village of Minsterley is just over a mile further southwest. The A488 road runs through the village, on its way from Shrewsbury to Bishop's Castle...
between the years 1914 and 1916, during which time she wrote The Golden Arrow. Her time in the village was commemorated in 1957 by the opening of the Mary Webb School.
The publication of The Golden Arrow in 1917 enabled them to move to Lyth Hill, Bayston Hill
Bayston Hill
Bayston Hill is a large village and civil parish in central Shropshire, England. It is south of the county town Shrewsbury and located on the main A49 road, the Shrewsbury to Hereford road....
a place Mary loved, buying a plot of land and building Spring Cottage.
In 1921, they bought a second property in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
hoping that she would be able to achieve greater literary recognition. This, however, did not happen. By 1927, she was suffering increasingly bad health, her marriage was failing, and she returned to Spring Cottage alone. She died at St Leonards on Sea, aged 46.
In her own lifetime, she won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse
Prix Femina
The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created in 1904 by 22 writers for the magazine La Vie heureuse . The prize is decided each year by an exclusively female jury, although the authors of the winning works do not have to be women...
for Precious Bane, but her output was not otherwise greatly esteemed. It was only after her death that Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC was a British Conservative politician, who dominated the government in his country between the two world wars...
, then Britain's Prime Minister, brought about her commercial success through his approbation; at a Literary Fund dinner in 1928, Baldwin referred to her as a neglected genius. Consequently her collected works were republished in a standard edition by Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape was a London-based publisher founded in 1919 as "Page & Co" by Herbert Jonathan Cape , formerly a manager at Duckworth who had worked his way up from a position of bookshop errand boy. Cape brought with him the rights to cheap editions of the popular author Elinor Glyn and sales of...
, becoming best sellers in the 1930s and running into many editions.
Her work is still widely admired. Three of her novels have been reprinted in recent times by Virago; these, like her writing in general, are notable for their descriptions of nature, and of human psychology.
Stella Gibbons
Stella Gibbons
Stella Dorothea Gibbons was an English novelist, journalist, poet, and short-story writer.Her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1933...
's 1932 novel Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm
Cold Comfort Farm is a comic novel by Stella Gibbons, published in 1932. It parodies the romanticised, sometimes doom-laden accounts of rural life popular at the time, by writers such as Mary Webb...
was a parody of Webb's work, as well as of other "loam and lovechild" writers like Sheila Kaye-Smith
Sheila Kaye-Smith
Sheila Kaye-Smith was an English writer, known for her many novels set in the borderlands of Sussex and Kent in the English regional tradition...
and Mary E. Mann
Mary E. Mann
Mary E. Mann, née Rackham, was an English writer of novels and short stories, primarily on themes of poverty and rural English life.-Life:...
and, further back, Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
. In a 1966 Punch
Punch (magazine)
Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...
article, Gibbons observed:
- The large agonised faces in Mary Webb's book annoyed me ... I did not believe people were any more despairing in Herefordshire [sic] than in Camden Town.
The museum at the Tourist Information Centre in Much Wenlock
Much Wenlock
Much Wenlock, earlier known as Wenlock, is a small town in central Shropshire, England. It is situated on the A458 road between Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth. Nearby, to the northeast, is the Ironbridge Gorge, and the new town of Telford...
includes a lot of information on Mary Webb including a display of photographs of the filming of her novel Gone to Earth in 1950.
Her cottage on Lyth Hill can still be seen, but has been much extended and modernised.
Works
- The Golden Arrow (July 1916). London : Constable.
- Gone to Earth (September 1917). London : Constable.
- The Spring of Joy; a little book of healing (October 1917). London : J. M. DentJ. M. DentJoseph Malaby Dent was a British book publisher who produced the Everyman's Library series.Dent was born in Darlington in what is now the Britaania public house. After a short and unsuccessful stint as an apprentice printer he took up bookbinding...
. - The House in Dormer Forest (July 1920). London : HutchinsonHutchinson (publisher)Hutchinson & Co. was an English book publisher, founded in 1887. The company merged with Century Publishing in 1985 to form Century Hutchinson, and was folded into the British Random House Group in 1989, where it remains as an imprint in the Cornerstone Publishing division...
. - Seven For A Secret; a love story (October 1922). London : Hutchinson.
- Precious BanePrecious BanePrecious Bane is a novel by Mary Webb, first published in 1924. It won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Prize.In 1957 it was made into a six part BBC television drama series starring Patrick Troughton and Daphne Slater...
(July 1924). London : Jonathan CapeJonathan CapeJonathan Cape was a London-based publisher founded in 1919 as "Page & Co" by Herbert Jonathan Cape , formerly a manager at Duckworth who had worked his way up from a position of bookshop errand boy. Cape brought with him the rights to cheap editions of the popular author Elinor Glyn and sales of...
. - Poems and the Spring of Joy (Essays and Poems) (1928). London : Jonathan Cape.
- Armour Wherein He Trusted: A Novel and Some Stories (1929). London : Jonathan Cape.
- A Mary Webb Anthology, edited by Henry B.L. Webb (1939). London : Jonathan Cape.
- Fifty-One Poems (1946). London : Jonathan Cape. With wood engravings by Joan HassallJoan HassallJoan Hassall, was a wood engraver, book illustrator and typographer. Her subject matter ranged from natural history to illustrations for English literary classics...
- The Essential Mary Webb, edited by Martin Armstrong (1949). London : Jonathan Cape.
- Mary Webb: Collected Prose and Poems, edited by Gladys Mary Coles (1977). Shrewsbury : Wildings.
- Selected Poems of Mary Webb, edited by Gladys Mary Coles (1981). Wirral : Headland
Dramatic adaptations
Gone to Earth is the story of Hazel Woodus, a child of nature with a pet fox who (that is, Hazel) simply wants to be herself, living among the remote Shropshire hills of the Welsh MarchesWelsh Marches
The Welsh Marches is a term which, in modern usage, denotes an imprecisely defined area along and around the border between England and Wales in the United Kingdom. The precise meaning of the term has varied at different periods...
with her harpist coffin-building father, but gets drawn into the world of normal human relationships through her great beauty, marrying a local church minister, but also becoming the object of the local fox-hunting squire's obsessive love for her. She casts herself down a mineshaft to escape, clutching her beloved fox. Gone to Earth
Gone to Earth (film)
Gone to Earth is a film by the British-based director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Jennifer Jones, David Farrar and Cyril Cusack and features Esmond Knight. The film was significantly changed for the American market by David O...
was filmed in 1950 by Michael Powell
Michael Powell (director)
Michael Latham Powell was a renowned English film director, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger...
and Emeric Pressburger
Emeric Pressburger
Emeric Pressburger was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a multiple-award-winning partnership known as The Archers and produced a series of classic British films, notably 49th Parallel , The...
, starring Jennifer Jones as Hazel Woodus. However, it was later re-edited, shortened and retitled for its American release, and fell into relative obscurity. In 1985, the full 110-minute restored version was released by the National Film Archive, to great acclaim. A DVD is available.
Precious Bane is set in the years after the Battle of Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
, and tells the story of Prue Sarn, disfigured by a harelip which her superstitious neighbours regard as a sign that she is a witch, and how she falls in love with a visiting weaver, Kester Woodseaves. It was first produced as a six part BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television drama series in 1957, starring Patrick Troughton
Patrick Troughton
Patrick George Troughton was an English actor most widely known for his roles in fantasy, science fiction and horror films, particularly in his role as the second incarnation of the Doctor in the long-running British science-fiction television series Doctor Who, which he played from 1966 to 1969,...
and Daphne Slater
Daphne Slater
Daphne Slater is an English actress noted for Shakespearian and period films and wife of John Harrison actor, film and television director and producer...
. It was then adapted as a single play by French Television (ORTF) in 1968, with Dominique Labourier as Prue, Josep Maria Flotats as Gedeon and Pierre Vaneck as Kester; the director was Claude Santelli; the title was 'Sarn' (French title of the novel). TV channel TCM have shown this film several times in 2008. The most recent adaptation was as a television play by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in 1989, with Janet McTeer
Janet McTeer
Janet McTeer, OBE is a British actress.-Life and career:McTeer was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom, the daughter of Jean and Alan McTeer...
as Prue, Clive Owen
Clive Owen
Clive Owen is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991...
as her brother Gideon, and John Bowe as Kester.
External links
- The Mary Webb Society
- Richard Moult - artist & composer - has composed music to several Mary Webb poems; several are in the album Songs which is free for downloading
- Literary Heritage - West Midlands - profile and e-texts of all her novels