Golden Arrow - Mary Webb - BBC Saturday Night Theatre

Mary Gladys Webb (25 March 1881 – 8 October 1927) was an English romantic 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. The novels are thought to have inspired the famous parody Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons.

Her writing in general was reviewed as notable for poetic descriptions of nature. Another aspect throughout her work was a close and fatalistic view on human psychology.

She won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse for Precious Bane. After her death, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin brought about her commercial success when, at a dinner of the Royal Literary Fund in 1928, he referred to her as a neglected genius. Consequently her collected works were republished in a standard edition by Jonathan Cape, becoming best sellers in the 1930s and running into many editions.

Stella Gibbons's 1932 novel Cold Comfort Farm was a parody of Webb's work, as well as of other "loam and lovechild" writers like Sheila Kaye-Smith and Mary E. Mann and, further back, Thomas Hardy. In a 1966 Punch article, Gibbons observed:

The large agonised faces in Mary Webb's book annoyed me ... I did not believe people were any more despairing in Herefordshire [sic] than in Camden Town.

The museum at the Tourist Information Centre in Much Wenlock includes much information on Mary Webb, including a display of photographs of the filming of her novel Gone to Earth in 1950.
(Wikipedia)

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