Mary Webb
Mary Webb was an English novelist known for her five published works between 1916 and 1924, with her most notable novel, *Precious Bane*, earning her the Femina-Vie Heureuse Prize. Born Mary Gladys Meredith Webb to a schoolmaster in England, she experienced a largely home-based education before marrying another educator, Henry Bertram Law Webb. Throughout her life, she battled health issues, including Graves' disease, which affected her well-being and writing career. Although her novels received little recognition during her lifetime, they gained posthumous acclaim after being praised by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in 1928.
Webb's writing is characterized by its focus on moral themes and inner meanings, drawing comparisons to authors like George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. Her works often feature stock characters and didactic elements, exploring contrasts between different lifestyles and values. Notable titles include *Gone to Earth* and *Seven for a Secret*. After a decline in popularity due to parodies like Stella Gibbons' *Cold Comfort Farm*, Webb's novels have seen a resurgence in interest, including adaptations in film and television, highlighting her enduring influence in English literature.
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Mary Webb
English novelist
- Born: March 25, 1881
- Birthplace: Leighton-Under-the-Wrekin, Shropshire, England
- Died: October 8, 1927
- Place of death: St. Leonards, Sussex, England
Biography
Mary Gladys Meredith Webb was the daughter of an English-Welsh schoolmaster portrayed as a charming, sympathetic man in his daughter’s first novel, The Golden Arrow. Webb was educated largely at home, although she spent two years at a private school in Southport, England. She began to write when she was a child, trying her hand at stories and poetry. In 1912 she married Henry Bertram Law Webb, also a schoolmaster. She suffered constant ill health and developed Graves’ disease. Webb’s five novels appeared from 1916 to 1924, with almost no recognition at the time of their publication from either readers or critics. Her only award was the Femina-Vie Heureuse Prize for 1924-1925, which she received for Precious Bane. An unfinished novel, Armour Wherein He Trusted, was published posthumously. When Webb died she was practically unknown, but in 1928 Prime MinisterStanley Baldwin praised her novels at a Royal Literary Fund dinner. After that recognition, her fame began to grow; her five novels were reprinted shortly thereafter, with introductions by Baldwin, G. K. Chesterton, and others.
Webb is evocative of many earlier writers, especially George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. Her novels tend to concentrate on inner meanings that sometimes cause her books to stray away from the reality of most contemporary fiction. Webb’s frequent didacticism, too, is contrary to the tastes of many modern readers. In The Golden Arrow are two pairs of lovers, one pair exemplary and the other foolish. The contrasts are always obvious, and the author frequently invades the narrative with intrusive commentary and moralizing. In The House in Dormer Forest there is a contrast again, this time between one family that is close to nature and another that is grasping and materialistic. Once more Webb is obvious in preferring the former to the latter and asking the reader to do the same. In this novel, as in her others, there are stock characters, such as the plain, despised woman of hidden sweetness who is saved from wasting a life by the timely arrival of a husband who is the epitome of masculinity and who has high, idealistic values. Other novels are Gone to Earth, Seven for a Secret, and Precious Bane, the latter being Webb’s best-known novel. Her unfinished novel, Armour Wherein He Trusted, took the author out of the setting she had habitually used—contemporary Shropshire—into medieval times, for the work was to be a historical romance set against the background of the First Crusade. Also published was The Spring of Joy, a volume of essays and poetry written during her adult years. This collection has a preface by Walter de la Mare, in which he points out that her poetry and prose both contain certain poetic elements and that her prose rhythms derive from such specific seventeenth century authors as Sir Thomas Browne, author of Religio Medici (c. 1635) and Urn Burial (1658). Her Gone to Earth was filmed in 1948, and a popular television drama series of Precious Bane was produced in 1989. Although the popularity of her novels waned as a result of Stella Gibbons’s spoof Cold Comfort Farm (1932), since then it has revived considerably.
Bibliography
Barale, Michele. Daughters and Lovers: The Life and Writing of Mary Webb. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1986. Good critical study.
Cavaliero, Glen. The Rural Tradition in the English Novel, 1900-1939. New York: Macmillan, 1977. Cavaliero makes some interesting observations regarding Webb as a provincial novelist.
Coles, Gladys. Mary Webb. Chester Springs, Pa.: Dufour Editions, 1990. Good biography; includes bibliography.
Dickens, Gordon. Mary Webb: A Narrative Bibliography of Her Life and Works. Shrewsbury, England: Shropshire Libraries, 1981. This thirty-three-page pamphlet makes an excellent starting place.
Paterson, John, and Evangeline Paterson. “Reality and Symbol in the Work of Mary Webb.” In Humanistic Geography and Literature, edited by Douglas Pocock. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981. An interesting chapter.
Wrenn, Dorothy. Goodbye to Morning: A Biographical Study of Mary Webb. Shrewsbury, England: Wilding & Son, 1964. Well-researched biography.