Precious Bane (Virago Modern Classics)

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Her father, George Edward Meredith was an Oxford M.A. and teacher. He became a great influence in her life. She shared his love of literature and of the countryside. The Celtic influence of her parentage was strong. Her father was proud of his Welsh descent. London life was difficult for her but there were some positives. She made some influential friends and continued writing. She even produced Precious Bane at this time, partly in London and partly at Lyth Hill. She obtained some reviewing work and was becoming more confident.

Biography - Mary Webb Society Biography - Mary Webb Society

Autobiographical elements can be seen in the heroine of Precious Bane, Prue Sarn, who is afflicted with a hare-lip and is treated as a social pariah." The setting for the story has been attributed to the Meres of northern Shropshire, but is more likely to have been the area around Bomere Pool which was closer to the author's own home at Spring Cottage on Lyth Hill. The travel writer S. P. B. Mais recorded being taken to the pool to see the location of “Sarn” in the 1930s. [1] These locations remained very rural at the time the novel was written, and Mary Webb was herself very much part of local country life there in the 1920s. Webb uses the rural setting to isolate Prue Sarn and her fellow characters from the larger world; at one point Prue tells us, "four years went by, and though a deal happened out in the world, naught happened to us. [2] Title [ edit ] 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]

Mary Webb

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.” Jancis Beguildy - The wizard's daughter and Gideon Sarn's intended wife, plump, blonde with a lush, pleasing mouth always forming a lovely "oh."

Precious Bane by Mary Webb | Hachette UK

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.Missis Beguildy - Beguildy's wife who fears her husband and yet does not hesitate to collude with Gideon and Jancis in their plans to be together. She is crafty in her methods to get her husband out of the house for days at a time, and she is sharp in her observations of the people in the community. Now it was still the custom at that time, in our part of the country, to give a fee to some poor man after a death, and then he would take bread and wine handed to him across the coffin, and eat and drink, saying-- It was the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, a big fan, who started the process of posthumous success when, seven months after her death, he paid tribute to a “neglected genius”. 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.' This is such a beautifully written book that is so underrated and that could be because it is not well known. I had not heard of it before it was chosen as a group read and what a shame if I had never had the opportunity to know Prue and her story. The prose immerses one in the countryside and gives one a feel for the archaic dialect unique to this area. I felt that this gave the novel an authentic touch. Being able to transport a reader to a world unfamiliar is a sure sign of an adept writer. It was so pleasant to hear the songs of the willow wrens and see the fields of sweet barley. Or to watch the dragonflies or “daffodowndillies” fluttering up into the sky. I especially enjoyed learning about the rural customs like the ‘love spinning’ where the ladies gather to spin the wool that will be woven into the fabric for the wedding. Another curious tradition was called ‘sin eating’ when a person takes over the sins of a deceased person.

Mary Webb - Wikipedia Mary Webb - Wikipedia

And fourth---the original sketches by Rowland Hilder are phenomenal---if you read this, get the 1980 edition that has these original sketches reprinted. 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-- No, no! Leave un go free, Gideon! Let un rest, poor soul! You be in life and young, but he'm cold and helpless, in the power of Satan. He went with all his sins upon him, in his boots, poor soul! If there's none else to help, let his own lad take pity.'Like Mary, the movie has had something of a renaissance. It had a decidedly mixed reception from critics, and flopped on its British release. A heavily reworked version released to American audiences as The Wild Heart fared no better. 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.