Gone to Earth

Hazel Woodus lives with her father, a coffin-maker and beekeeper, on a Shropshire hill, keeps a tame fox, and is wanted by two men — a minister and the master of the hunt. Webb wrote Shropshire as she saw it, while Graves' disease disfigured her; she died at forty-six almost unread, and was famous six months later when the Prime Minister praised her in a speech. The fox is not a symbol. Fifty-six plates, from Munch to Corot, gather women in gardens, on bridges, at windows—the same watchful female figure Webb set loose on her hill.