Precious Bane (Virago Modern Classics)

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He is Prue's opposite number, taking no delight in nature, and showing little affection for his aging mother. Now the four winds stand up to sing their winter song-the thud of snow from creaking pine-branches, the cracking of ice on the meres, the reverberating fall of rocks split by the black frost on the hilltop, the shivering whimper of owls-these are the crude notes of the dark months.

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Our narrator, looking back on those years as a "very old woman," is one of the greatest characters in English literature, Prue Sarn (b. Mary Webb was born Mary Gladys Meredith on March 25, 1881, at Leighton, near Buildwas, into an upper middle class family.She died on October 8, 1927, at St Leonard’s-on-Sea, with her old governess Miss Lory at her bedside. She drew her literary inspiration from the landscape, people and folklore of the rural West Midlands and wove it into her work. In recent years the current owners of Spring Cottage have submitted plans to demolish it and replace it with a much larger modern house. Unfortunately, brother Gideon’s bane - his ruthless pursuit of money and position - ultimately proves his undoing. In those first mystical moments, he becomes her “master” and his image and spirit will infuse her thoughts in the hard days ahead.

Book club: Precious Bane , by Mary Webb - The Church Times Book club: Precious Bane , by Mary Webb - The Church Times

I challenge anyone to watch the final sequence without at least sniffling a little at the sheer romance of it all.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. She loved to watch him and talk with him all in a friendly way with no belief that a man would ever look at her in the same way. Her father, George Edward Meredith, a private schoolteacher, [2] inspired his daughter with his own love of literature and the local countryside. Posthumous success came in 1928 when the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin acclaimed her work, which was then gathered and published in successive editions by Jonathan Cape.