Precious Bane

by Mary Webb

Overview

Born at the time of Waterloo in the wild country of Shropshire, Prudence Sarn is a wild, passionate girl, cursed with a hare lip — her 'precious bane'. Cursed for it, too, by the superstitious people amongst whom she lives. Prue loves two things: the remote countryside of her birth and, hopelessly, Kester Woodseaves, the weaver. The tale of how Woodseaves gradually discerns Prue's true beauty is set against the tragic drama of Prue's brother, Gideon, a driven man who is out of harmony with the natural world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268015381
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	08/31/1990
Edition description:	1
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	1,105,505
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.73(d)

About the Author

Mary Gladys Webb (1881-1927) was an English romance novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people whom she knew. 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. The novels are thought to have inspired the famous parody Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons.

Table of Contents

Book One

Sarn Mere 6

Telling the Bees 9

Prue Takes the Bidding Letters 19

Torches and Rosemary 22

The First Swath Falls 28

“Saddle Your Dreams Before You Ride ’Em” 36

Pippins and Jargonelles 43

Book Two

Riding to Market 49

The Mug of Cider 59

“Or Die in ’Tempting It” 67

The Wizard of Plash 73

The Love-Spinning 78

The Game of Costly Colours 83

“The Maister Be Come” 92

Raising Venus 97

The Game of Conquer 101

Book Three

The Hiring Fair 113

The Baiting 122

“The Best Tall Script, Flourished” 131

Jancis Runs Away 143

Dragon-flies 163

Book Four

Harvest Home 172

Beguildy Seeks a Seventh Child 188

The Deathly Bane 204

All on a May Morning 215

The Last Game of Conquer 230

The Breaking of the Mere 239

“Open the Gates as Wide as the Sky” 250

Editorial Reviews

"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

"On some bookshelves, we feel sure, Precious Bane will find almost a hallowed place." —The New York Times Book Review

"The book opens with one of those simple sentences which haunt the mind until the curiosity has been satisfied . . . It strikes a note which never fails throughout; it opens with a beauty which is justified to the last sentence." —Hilda Addison

From the Publisher

Mary Webb need fear no comparison with any writer who has attempted to capture the soul of nature in words.”

praise for the author 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.”

praise for the author Mail on Sunday (UK)

It is a genuine pleasure to listen to Justine Eyre narrate this treasure of an audiobook set in the English countryside of the early nineteenth century. There is a naturalness and fluidity to her performance that renders the formal language fresh for contemporary ears. Eyre’s characterizations are excellent as she shifts among the male and female personalities, giving each a beating heart and a textured vibrancy.”

AudioFile

It is a genuine pleasure to listen to Justine Eyre narrate this treasure of an audiobook set in the English countryside of the early nineteenth century. There is a naturalness and fluidity to her performance that renders the formal language fresh for contemporary ears. Eyre's characterizations are excellent as she shifts among the male and female personalities, giving each a beating heart and a textured vibrancy. The story centers on the kindhearted Prudence, born with a cleft palate (her "precious bane"), who lives with her domineering brother, Gideon. The fullness of life is found in the rhythm and flow of this rural community as romances spark and pale, tensions build and ease between family members and among neighbors, and the natural world is a continuing force to be reckoned with. M.J. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile