Precious Bane

By Mary Webb and Mary Webb. Illustrated by Rowland Hilder

Book Overview

In the early 19th century, young Prue and Gideon Sarn live with their mother on a farm around a mere deep in the Shropshire countryside. Their life is full to brimming with the agricultural round, the seasons dominating. Also crucial is all the lore which underlies life - meanings deduced from natural events, modified to some extent by the dicta of the church.

Prue is quietly aware of one essential difference in herself - she has a harelip, which her mother tells her sadly is the result of a hare having crossed her path when pregnant. Prue accepts that she will not have the fruitful life of love and children that a young woman of those times could expect. Gideon, after the death of their father, has shown his determined nature by enlisting Prue and their mother in an exhausting round of farmwork. His aim is to make a fortune quickly and buy a much grander house he has spied nearby, with all the servants and status that go with it.

Prue's admiration of her brother's strength and handsomeness does not waver, even when he is too single-minded to be truly kind. The daughter of their near neighbours, Jancis Beguildy, sees him similarly, but with added romantic attachment, which is returned by Gideon. Jancis' father is looked upon with great suspicion by the local community as a waker of demons and potential wizard, but, true to her all-welcoming nature, Prue is happy to go there regularly for lessons in reading and writing. On one visit there she also sees the new local weaver, Kester Woodseaves, who, like Gideon, is extraordinarily strong and attractive. Though she sees any romance as impossible due to her blemish, Prue is privately completely captured by the idea of him.

Prue and Gideon have the malleable ideas of those attached to the land, where strict church morality is seen as sometimes too restrictive and unreasonable, as long as the intentions of any misdoer are good. Jancis' father has taken against Gideon, for reasons which go back to a feud with their own father. When the physical nature of Gideon and Jancis' relationship prior to their marriage is revealed, something snaps in Beguildy. His revengeful action ushers in enormous disturbance - the tensions surrounding the Sarns and Beguildys in the local community, which had been sleeping, are awoken with savagery. Their quiet lives are devastated, their failings magnified, the impacts reverberating in ever growing circles of disaster. At the centre of the mel e, it will take all her strength for Prue to survive.

In her last completed novel, first published in 1924, Mary Webb reached for two key differences from her prior work: a setting further back in time, and the use of a first-person narrator, bringing the beginnings of a new and extraordinary lucidity and immediacy to her already poetic prose. Precious Bane was a harbinger of brilliance to come, sadly cut short by Webb's tragic death.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 064575191X
• ISBN13: 9780645751918
• Release Date: September 2024
• Publisher: Michael Walmer
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A Book to Savor

This is an amazing book which should be read by all those who enjoy British literature. It is a touching, romantic story. The writing is sensual in that there are sounds, smells, sights, tastes and textures to be experienced in its textual descriptions. The natural setting almost becomes a "character" in and of itself because you could not take the story out of the beautiful, natural, country setting Webb creates. Look at other reviews to understand the plot. However, it truly doesn't make sense to try to recount it. Be patient when waiting for the "hook", when you won't be able to put the book down, it will come. Also, allow yourself a bit of time to learn to read and hear in your mind the syntax and sound of the words. Mary Webb takes you to a different place and time and you come to understand what it would be like for a young woman with intelligence, family devotion, character and longings who happened to be born with an external defect. May this book become one of your favorites as it has become one of mine. (If anyone knows how I might obtain a video/DVD of the Masterpiece Theatre version with Janet McTeer and Clive Owen, please let me know.)

A Precious Legacy

This book takes one back to a day when the timeless values were often the subject of literature, and language held beauties we seldom see today. It is a deeply touching evocation of a long ago world as remote as Middle Earth or Narnia. The meaning of the title is not clear to me, whether it is Prue's deformity or the passionate devotion to materialism of her brother, but I rather lean to the latter, since his life is so utterly poisoned by his addiction. Highly recommended.

Like a Hardy character come to life

Like a previous reviewer, Stella Gibbon's pastiche of the English rustic romance, 'Cold Comfort Farm' sprang to mind in the early stages of Mary Webb's 'Precious Bane'. But it must be borne in mind that Gibbon's book can be as easily read as a lampoon of the un-romantic no-nonsense 'bright young thing' of the twenties,as it can a pastiche of the English rustic romance. Furthermore,as I read on, this cynical thought was quickly replaced by a different one: that the book bears closer resemblence to Thomas Hardy than it does to Gibbons, or , for that matter, the works of the Brontes (the rustic romance as bestseller!)which may be hallmarks of style, but can hardly be read as sensitive examinations of the human condition. Webb writes from the heart. While the story is as romantic as a fairy tale, there is a subtltey in her writing, and a fatalistic view of the natural world that suggests a deep spirituality combined with mental resolve. The character of Gideon is comparable to Hardy's tragic figures such as Boldwood in 'Far from the Madding Crowd" or the mayor of 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'. The fact that this book was written some eighty or ninety years ago by a woman, that its central character is a woman, and that the Webb chose to write using words and phrases of indigenous dialect has probably meant that it has been treated as a quaint piece of naive rural handicraft, rather than the deceptively careful literary construction that it is. If one of Hardy's characters had written a book, this is the book they would have written.

PB has become one of my favorite books

I am a senior in high school. I read this book under reccomendation from both my father and sister. Precious Bane truly was a breathtaking story. It's a shame it's out of regular print; I think if more people knew about this book, it would be much more widely read. I reccomended it to all my friends in school, and we together convinced our English teacher to use it as material for the course. Unfortunatly we all might have to pay the hefty $14 price if the school won't pay for it! I was hoping to find some used or paperback editions but alas my search has been to no avail!

A truly romantic story

I watched the last five minutes of the "PBS version" in '89 or '90, and it was so beautiful that it haunted me for years. Once I had found the book, I had little patience with the text's "accent", and I couldn't read it. A couple of years later, I was determined to conquer the book. I finally came to the realization that it's a love story. The dialect became easy, and I couldn't put the book down. Although the subject matter can be heavy at times, it's a must read for true romantics. Jane Eyre, eat your heart out!