MARY WEBB

Hokitika Guardian, 5 November 1929, Page 2

MARY WEBB

PARTICULARS OF “PRECIOUS BANE.” Replying to a correspondent asking for information regarding the author of “ Precious Bane.”

An edition of the novel published by Messrs Jonathan Cape contains an introduction by Mr Stanley Baldwin in which some, details respecting the life of the author are given. The 'following extracts from Mr Baldwin’s introduction may be of interest “ Alary .Meredith, the author of ‘ Precious Bane,’ was horn in the little village of Leighton, near Cressage, under the AVrekin. on March 25th, 1881, and died at St. Leonards; October Bth, 1627, and was buried at

Shrewsbury. She was the daughter oi George Edward Meredith, a s hoolmaster of Welsh descent, by his marriage with Sarah Alice Scott, daughter of an Edinburgh doct'T c.if the clan of Sir Walter Scott. She was the eldest of six children and spent her early childhood at The Grange, a. small country house near Much Wen lock:: from 12 to 21 she lived at Stflnton-on-Hine-Heath, six miles north-eastmf ShreWsh"ry, anil for the next ten years at The Old Mill, j Meole Brace, a mile from Shrewsbury. ' In 1912 Mary Meredith married Mr Henry Bertram Law' Webb, a Cam-' bridge graduate and a native of Sfivop-' shire. After two years at Weston-super-Mare, where Mr Webb bad a post in a school, Mr and Airs Webb returned to Shropshire, living at Pontesbury and Lvtb Hill, working as market gar- j deners and selling the produce at their own stall in Shrewsbury market. Mrs AVebb had written stories and poems from childhood, but it was at this period that she seriously turned her mind to writing novels. A volume of

essays on nature, ‘ The Spring of Joy,’ and three novels, ‘ The Golden Arrow,’ ‘ Gone to Earth,’ and ‘ The House in Dormer Forest,’ had been published before she came to live in London in 1921. 1 Seven ifor a Secret ’ followed in 1922, and 1 Precious Bane ’ in 1924.’ It was awarded the ‘ Femina Vie Heureuse ’ Prize for 1924-15 given annually for the best work of-Imagination, in prose or verse descriptive of English life by an author who had not attained sufficient recognition.”

“ ‘Precious Bane’ is a revelation not of unearthly but of earthly beauty in one bit of the England of Waterloo, the Western edge, haunted ■ ‘with the shadows of superstition, the' legendary lore and phantasy of neighbours on the Border, differing in blood and tongue. Hiis mingling df peoples and traditions and turns of speech and proverbial wisdom is what Mary AVebb saw with the eye of the mind as she stood at her stajl in Shrewsbury piarket, fastened in her memory, and fashioned for us In the little parcel of novels which is her legacy to literature,”