Precious Bane

Mary Webb's Precious Bane is a haunting rural novel set in the border country of Shropshire, where marshland, old speech, folklore, and hard country work shape every life. From the memoir-like voice of Prue Sarn, the story looks back on a half-mythic world of Sarn Mere, where superstition, religion, family discipline, and local custom mingle with daily labor and hidden grief. Prue, judged for her deformity and drawn toward the kind, poetic weaver Kester Woodseaves, tells of love, suffering, and the strange workings of fate in a community where beauty often lies beneath hardship. Around her move unforgettable figures: her proud, severe brother Gideon, the beautiful Jancis Beguildy, and the mysterious wizard Beguildy, whose schemes blur innocence and enchantment. Webb gives the landscape the force of a living presence, contrasting spring brightness with cruelty, domestic tenderness with violence, and human ambition with the quiet endurance of the land. Rich in dialect, memory, and tragic feeling, Precious Bane is both a vivid portrait of vanished rural life and a lyrical meditation on love, loss, and the preciousness of the past. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.