PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Mary Webb (1881-1927), poet, mystic and lover of nature, spent most of her life in Shropshire, which features in all of her novels. Admiring contemporaries described Webb as a 'strange genius' and 'one of the best living writers'. After a life of illness and near-poverty, Mary Webb died in Hampstead.
Brighter and better than Thomas Hardy . . . a marvellous writer -- Eloise Millar * Guardian * Mary Webb need fear no comparison with any writer who has attempted to capture the soul of nature in words -- John Buchan With the publication of Precious Bane, a substantial readership came to respect Mary Webb's quiet genius; and it is for this country classic that she has been remembered ever since. When she died at the age of 46, literature lost a voice that promised to speak for Shropshire as poignantly as Thomas Hardy had spoken for Wessex, Emily Bronte for Yorkshire * New York Times * [Webb] was a great mystic and a master of both inscape and landscape. Any dull afternoon in London is lifted by being transported to the Mary Webb country of the Shropshire hills and the Welsh borderland * Mail on Sunday * Mary Webb need fear no comparison with any writer who has attempted to capture the soul of nature in words * JOHN BUCHAN * [Webb] was a great mystic and a master of both inscape and landscape. Any dull afternoon in London is lifted by being transported to the Mary Webb country of the Shropshire hills and the Welsh borderland. * MAIL ON SUNDAY *
