The only cause for all the misfortune that they could see was the curse of God … They’d reasoned it out slow, as we do in the country, but once they came to the end of the reasoning they were fixed, and it would take a deal to turn them.” I thought maybe love was like that — a lot of gold threads, and one maister-thread of pure gold.” What different kinds of love are explored in the novel? I’m descended from farmers on both sides of my family, and although I’ve never experienced the toil of that life, it always resonates when I read about it. I find the lifestyle incredibly inspiring, making me want to throw down my book, roll up my sleeves, and get to work.

Precious Bane | Victorian England, Rural Life, Nature

Published in 1924, Precious Bane is a novel by Mary Webb (1881 - 1927) which touches on ambition, prejudice and hatred but also on the power of love. Prue Sarn is a farm girl in rural Shropshire during the period of the Napoleonic Wars and is viewed with suspicion by the local community because of having been born with a harelip. Her ambitious and domineering brother betrays her and her superstitious neighbours accuse her of witchcraft. An itinerant weaver Kester Woodseaves, makes his living by weaving for the local people in their homes. Like Prue, he loves the natural world and comes to recognises Prue's inner strength and beauty. ( Noel Badrian) Darkly delightful.. full of wit, invention and charm. Outdoor theatre doesn’t come better than this. The Guardian This book is now very easy to get hold of in the kindle/ebook format & I really recommend people try this one. What also had me bothered for some time is the subtle way in which Mary Webb implies that no one is naturally evil , what the characters (and ultimately what WE) become is the uncontrollable combination of fate, desire and chance altogether with their skill in taking the right decision at the right moment. This way to view life as a running river whose course we don't have the power to change produced a kind of claustrophobic feeling of impotence, with this constant foreboding, lurking behind my consciousness, that something gruesome was going to happen and that no one would be able to stop it, and I'd sink along with all the characters.Mary became very self-conscious as a result, avoiding social gatherings and wearing large hats and scarves to disguise her condition," says Liz. The famous writer in later life. Three of Webb's novels have been reprinted by Virago Press. [12] Bibliography [ edit ] Library resources about

Mary Webb - Wikipedia Mary Webb - Wikipedia

In 1926 she was awarded the prestigious Prix Femina for Precious Bane. This was awarded for 'the best imaginative work in prose or verse descriptive of English life by an author who has not gained sufficient recognition.' Six years after the novel’s publication, Webb’s writing was the subject of another tribute, of sorts, when Stella Gibbons’s novel Cold Comfort Farm appeared. Gibbons parachuted the brisk, expensively educated Flora Poste into rural Sussex, to take in hand a cast of brooding farmers, burdened by premonitions of doom and a not entirely authentic vernacular. in my younger years I was not a Thomas Hardy fan. Since Webb & Hardy's writing styles are supposed to be similar, maybe I should give Hardy another chance.I've never heard, for instance, of this concept of a "sin eater" before. Of course, in the Christian belief system Jesus Christ, the redeemer, was supposed to have died to redeem the world from its sins. Maybe this was what was being faintly echoed in what these old English folks came up with, as narrated by the principal protagonist here with her grieving mother, her brother Gideon and her dead father about to be buried:

Biography - Mary Webb Society Biography - Mary Webb Society

Hammill, Faye Cold Comfort Farm, D. H. Lawrence, and English Literary Culture Between the Wars, Modern Fiction Studies 47.4 (2001) 831-854 Mary Webb (1881-1927) was an English romantic novelist of the early 20th century, whose novels were set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people which she knew and loved well. Although she was acclaimed by John Buchan and by Rebecca West, who hailed her as a genius, and won the Prix Femina of La Vie Heureuse for Precious Bane (1924), she won little respect from the general public. It was only after her death that the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, earned her posthumous success through his approbation, referring to her as a neglected genius at a Literary Fund dinner in 1928. Prue's narrative voice is a joy. Partly, this is because of the quaint, endearing regional dialect that Webb faithfully reproduces, with colorful turns of phrase that fascinate. (Some of the vocabulary was unfamiliar, but I could usually glean the meaning from the context.) But mostly, it's because of her warm embrace of life, her caring heart for her fellow humans, and her delight in the sheer beauty of the natural world (richly described here in all of its glory, at a time before industrial pollution and urban sprawl menaced and defiled it; Webb clearly shared her protagonist's delight in it). She's one of the most beautiful souls you'll ever meet in a book (on both the inside and the outside; just because a lady happens to have a cleft palate doesn't mean she's not good-looking --and if you don't know that, Webb will educate you!), and as innately classy as any noblewoman in England. (Though I didn't shelve this as an "action heroine" book, at one point she actually does also have to step into that territory, and she rises to the occasion admirably; you'll recognize that scene when you come to it.) Set in Shropshire, England, after the Napoleonic Wars. Narrated by Prue Sarn, a young woman with a cleft lip, or hare-shotten lip, as it is called in the book. Precious Bane, set in the early 1800s, is the story of Gideon and Prue Sarn. A brother and sister entirely different: one all darkness, the other all brightness; one consumed by the lightning inside and the other emanating warmth; one ruthlessly desiring more whilst the other knows the value of her little piece of here and now. Their tale of love lost and won, betrayal and murder is played out against the Shropshire landscape, where questions about humanity’s relationship with the land abide.The couple lived briefly in Rose Cottage in Hinton Lane and then at The Nills [7] in the village of Pontesbury between the years 1914 and 1916, during which time she wrote The Golden Arrow. [8] Her time in the village is celebrated by the eponymously named Mary Webb School and Science College. [9] A strict churchman might find Prue much at fault (although, in Sarn, even the parson has a book of “curious ancient prayers”). She’s as likely to look in a wizard’s book for a solution as the Bible; she is well-versed in superstitious folk-lore, and lax in her churchgoing. Yet she is also full of scripture, the created world frequently evoking, for her, biblical scenes. The lilies on the mere are “like the raiment of those men who stood with Christ upon the mountain top”, floating as if Jesus, “walking upon the water, had laid them down with His cool hands”. At the age of twenty one, Mary was writing essays and poems with nature as the main theme (published in 1917 as The Spring of Joy). I discovered Precious Bane years after Cold Comfort Farm, and writing this feels like a sort of penance, having chosen a reading from the latter at my wedding. I think it is possible to love both. Like Baldwin, I was transported by Webb’s novel, a love story about a young woman with a “hare-shotten lip” who learns to tell the time by watching the reflections in Sarn Mere, a lake so old that she wonders whether it belongs to someone’s dream. “Maybe you never slept in a cot of rushes,” she observes. “But all of us did at Sarn.”

Precious Bane by Mary Webb | Goodreads Precious Bane by Mary Webb | Goodreads

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]Cavaliero, Glen (1977). The Rural Tradition in the English Novel 1900 - 1939. Towata, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield. p. 144. ISBN 0-87471-952-6. In her brief preface, Webb (b. 1881) speaks of listening to the "reminiscence" of Shropshire friends and neighbors as she was growing up, and particularly of the local lore she learned from her father. She also researched this novel seriously, as she indicates. Reading it genuinely transports you into a world and a way of life now essentially vanished. Textured depiction of the folkways and folklore, folk songs and customs of that time and place is a great strength of this book. It's a world that has its pluses and minuses, and you'll feel both of them profoundly. Webb looks unflinchingly at the sexist and classist attitudes of that time, including the double standard for sexual morality, and the ugly fallout these could have; the dangers of superstition, and the gruesome "sport" of bullbaiting. (We should probably include a trigger warning for animal death/cruelty --though, thanks to a brave action, not as much death and cruelty as there might have been.) The plot definitely isn't all sweetness and light; the baser attitudes and motives of some human hearts are on display, and some events are grim indeed. But the author recognizes life's beauty as well as its tragedy, and the positive as well as negative potential of the human spirit. Mary Gladys Webb (25 March 1881 – 8 October 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. At the coffin foot was our little pewter measure full of wine, and a crust of bread with it, but nobody touched them. A compelling story of passion, with an enduring air of enchantment throughout, Precious Bane is a novel that haunts us with its beauty and its timeless truths about our deepest hopes. Set in Shropshire in the 1800s, it is alive with the many moods of Nature, benevolent and violent and the many moods -- equally benevolent and violent -- of the people making lives there.