Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Webb
-
Standard Name: Webb, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Gladys Meredith
Married Name: Mary Gladys Webb
MW
became very well known in the early twentieth century as a poetic regional novelist. She also wrote poetry, essays, short stories, and reviews. Her subject-matter is a rural past of love, violence, beauty and cruelty, of nature's power and mystery, of passionate lives, particularly those of tragic women.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
She herself wrote that the hero [sic] of a country story must be instinct with the countryside: it is in his very bones; it is also his voice. The kind of fiction she aimed at unifies its characters with the earth, half frustrate, half triumphal.
qtd. in
Davies, Linda. Mary Webb Country. Palmers Press, 1990.
McCrum, Robert. “The Siege is a novel for now”. The Observer, 10 June 2001.
The books that she read, she says, made me, as a person...
Education
Philip Larkin
For ten years from 1930, as both a primary and a secondary-school student, PL
attended King Henry VIII School
in Coventry (now an independent school for both sexes, but founded in the sixteenth century as...
Education
Penelope Lively
Initially learning at home, Penelope became well versed in the Authorised Version, tales of Greece and Rome, The Arabian Nights and not much else.
Lively, Penelope. A House Unlocked. Grove Press, 2001.
71
She was passionately addicted to Greek mythology, but...
Family and Intimate relationships
Nina Bawden
Her mother, Ellalaine Ursula May Cushing (always called Judy), was born in 1898. Once the long-jump champion of Norfolk, she was still fit enough in her seventies to turn a neat cartwheel.
Bawden, Nina. In My Own Time: Almost An Autobiography. Virago, 1995.
ST
first heard of Mary Webb
, towards the end of the First World War, as an author whose books did not sell despite her excellent reviews. She read Gone to Earth, wrote Webb...
Intertextuality and Influence
Stella Gibbons
The idea for the novel germinated while SG
was working at the Evening Standard; she wrote much of it while travelling to and from work on the London tube.
Briggs, Asa. A History of Longmans and Their Books 1724 - 1990. Longevity in Publishing. British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2008.
390
In 1928, the year...
Intertextuality and Influence
Stella Gibbons
Such earthy regionalists—who include Thomas Hardy
and D. H. Lawrence
, as well as Webb
and Kaye-Smith
—become the butt of SG
's satire in Cold Comfort Farm.
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury, 1998.
The novel traces the great love of Frances and Arthur; Penelope Dell
reads them as Ethel and her new husband
, with the tyrannical Bishop of Burminster drawn from Ethel's sister Ella
, his weak...
Intertextuality and Influence
Bryony Lavery
The two women are quickly transported into the romance, where Lady Harriet Helstone is the rich and lovely, ardent and wilful scion of the hard-drinking, hard-riding, rakehelly Helstones,
Lavery, Bryony. Plays, 1. Methuen Drama, 1998.
89
and Molly is a simple village...
Literary responses
Constance Smedley
This work was reviewed by Mary Webb
for the Bookman in January 1925 together with Ethel Sidgwick
's Laura: A Cautionary Story and V. H. Friedlaender
's The Colour of Youth.
Crawford, Mary, and Bruce Crawford. “Selected Bibliography of Writings By and About Mary Webb”. Mary Webb, Neglected Genius, 2010.
According to Smedley...
Literary responses
Sheila Kaye-Smith
This novel brought critical and popular acclaim. SKS
said that the weeks following its appearance were some of the happiest of her life.
The Times Literary Supplement notice began: No matter what fine work...
Performance of text
Bryony Lavery
BL
's dramatic adaptation of Precious Bane by Mary Webb
, put on by the Pentabus Theatre Company
, was performed successively at several historic houses and at the Shrewsbury arts festival.
“Biographies: Bryony Lavery”. MCC’s Last Easter - Full Casting Announced.
“Precious Bane is a real treat”. BBC: Shropshire: Theatre & Arts, 20 July 2004.
Author summary
Stella Gibbons
SG
was a gifted comic writer whose lively, parodic first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, was such a success that it has tended to eclipse her later achievements. Much of her writing was inspired by...
Publishing
Hélène Barcynska
She began writing a fortnight after he died.
Barcynska, Hélène. Caradoc Evans. Hurst and Blackett, 1946.
12
Her photographic illustrations include a beautiful portrait of Mary Webb
. Her husband had asked her, if she wrote his life, neither to caricature nor to...
Timeline
30 July 1935: Penguin Books issued its first ten titles:...
Writing climate item
30 July 1935
Penguin Books
issued its first ten titles: sixpenny paperbacks with a characteristic penguin logo.
Penguin UK: About Us: Company History. http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/aboutus/history.html.
