Precious Bane
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Product Description
Review
'Mary Webb need fear no comparison with any writer who has attempted to capture the soul of nature in words' 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.' MAIL ON SUNDAY
Product Description
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.
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First Sentence
IT was at a love-spinning that I saw Kester first. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
IT was at a love-spinning that I saw Kester first. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Precious Bane is a classic of historical literature written by the comparatively unknown author Mary Webb. Published in 1924 but set in her native Shropshire 100 years earlier, the story of Precious Bane has the scope, power, insight and plot of anything by Thomas Hardy, George Elliot, or the Brontes. Written in a rather quaint ( and easy to read ) dialect it tells the story of a young farm girl who was born with a hare lip. The strongly conceived plot is supported by some of the finest descriptions of period rural life ever. The running of a mixed farm, the market, the hiring fair, bull-baiting, the customs, the characters, the hierarchy and the countryside birds, flowers and dragonflies are weaved together into a heart-rending love story. No wonder the then Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin ( 1928 ) was moved to write an introduction to the book.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Precious Bane has been my constant companion since the age of 13. Over the past 27 years I have read it many, many times, sometimes just opening the book to any page, haphazard fashion, and getting completely emersed in the beauty of the language that captures the true essence of English country life in the early twentieth century. The story is told from the perspective of a young woman who is very sensitive to the changes of mood of both Nature and Man. There are words of wisdom in every page and lessons of life to be learnt from every situation and character in the book. A remarkable book that cannot be be praised enough.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Oh, this is a wonderful book and very unusual. Anyone who feels a sense of the primeval in the countryside, will appreciate Mary Webbs observations of nature. She "listens" to nature and describes it's secrets. Secrets of something beyond this world. Pantheism, I suppose.
Prue Sarn is my favourite heroine of all the hundreds of good novels I have read. I like her simplicity and innocence, her "merry ways and her mocking ways", her human-ness and her droll observations of human nature.
The background of rural life in olden times, with it's customs and superstitions, makes for a richness of texture, which is very satisfying.
And the growing of love between Prue and Kester Woodseaves the weaver, is very sweet.
This book is generally overlooked by scholarly literary critics, so I was pleased to discover recently, that it was admired by C.S. Lewis, lecturer in literature at both Oxford and Cambridge universities.
I've noticed that cynical, "modern" types tend to despise this book, so if you are "one of them", I wouldn't bother with it!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
One of the all-time greats
This is a very special book, a book which creates its own world and takes you along with it, until you are a part of it yourself. Read more
Published 1 month ago by A. C. Dickens
A forgotton time brought to life - a vivid classic tale
Mary Webb wrote during the early years of the twentieth century about lives in the previous century. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Susan Pope
Too well hidden gem in English literature
Mary Webb is under appreciated now much as she was in her own lifetime and her output of the so-called Nature novel is overlooked in favor of other authors such as Hardy. Read more
Published on 14 May 2010 by Laura E. Bean
I love this book
This delightful book is one of my all-time favourites: touching, engaging and with a wonderful ending. I have read it more than once and often buy it as a gift.
Published on 21 Nov 2009 by Lulu
Far better than Hardy
I picked this book up on a whim, with very dim memories of the BCC TV production starring Janet McTeer (I think)and was completely knocked off by feet by reading it. Read more
Published on 10 Aug 2009 by Good Book Fan
One of my favourite books
This book has been one of my favourites for about 25 years, ever since I bought it almost at random, and then read it on a long train journey through France. Read more
Published on 14 Jan 2009 by Alun Williams
MARY WEBB'S MASTERPIECE
Mary webb only wrote 6 novels in her short, tragic life. And with one of these , she died before completion. Read more
Published on 29 April 2008 by D. J. Williams
it's not prose!
I would like to alert potential buyers to the fact that the 2003 paperback edition of "Precious Bane" with the yellow leaf on the cover is not in fact the novel, but a short... Read more
Published on 11 April 2007 by Anastasia Z.
Stunning. This should be filmed (if it hasn't already been)
Written in a soon-pick-upable dialect, this is an evocative and movingstory of a woman, Prue Sarn, 'blighted' by a physical malformation (a harelip). Read more
Published on 20 April 2004
review of precious bane by mother of two
Precious Bane is a passionate book where nature is immensly powerful and human spirit is inspiring.I have re-read it many times and consider Pru to be a thrilling if unconventional... Read more
Published on 6 April 2003
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