Books by Mary Webb

Dormer is an old house with Elizabethan origins, much added to. It sits, very isolated, in a cup of the Shropshire hills, surrounded by forest. The Darke family have lived there for centuries. Solomon Darke is a squire farmer who tends to unthinking conservatism; his wife Rachel is harsh, fierce and uncompromising. They have four children - the eldest is the sensitive and original Amber, who feels, at thirty, that life has passed her by. Her brothers Jasper and Peter are more strong-willed - Jasper questions all around him in a determined but romantic way, while Peter has no time for any fuss and forcefully seeks simple pleasures. Their younger sister Ruby is biddable, nä¿¿ve and full of laughter. Rachel Darke's ancient mother lives with them, a harridan remnant in ringlets and flounces, dominating this already intense family with savage outbursts and calculating glances. Completing the family is Catherine, a young relative of Rachel and her mother, whose icy beauty has entrapped Jasper, and whose cold passions equal in power the heat of the Darkes'. A complex web of personal desires and long held antipathies becomes activated in the first instance by Jasper's return home, having been expelled from college for his rejection of religion. As hoped-for alliances collapse, dubious loves flower, well-laid plans go awry, and thwarted yearnings erupt into flame, this singular family and all around them are drawn into a seeming vortex which threatens to carry all with it to destruction. Mary Webb's personality shared a great deal with that of Emily Brontë, in terms not only of her love of nature and its kindling power, but also of her openness to the fullness of ardency. In this extraordinary third novel she delved this self profoundly, also introducing, in a way she hadn't before, leavening humour and cool analysis of character to balance this modern gothic vehemence. The House in Dormer Forest is heady and fascinating, risking a great deal and triumphing uniquely.

Mary Webb was passionately devoted to revealing nature in all of its expressions and forms. She was diagnosed with Graves' disease at the age of 20, and in times of recovery she early noticed that her love of nature sped her healing. She also, in these sensitive times of contemplation and struggle, saw the natural world more tenderly and luminously; the urgencies of life were clearer. The Spring of Joy collects together a group of exquisite essays of appreciation, written with the idea of succouring 'the weary and wounded in the battle of life.' They are an extraordinary record of a woman's empathy, not only for the beauty, colour, form, delicacy and majesty of the natural world, but also for her fellow human beings who suffer.

* A work of rare poetic beauty in the tradition of the Brontes and Hardy