The daughter of a Welsh gypsy and a crazy bee-keeper, Hazel Woodus is happiest living in her forest cottage in the remote Shropshire hills, at one with the winds and seasons, protector and friend of the wild animals she loves. But Hazel's beauty and innocence prove irresistible to the men in her orbit. Both Jack Reddin, the local squire and Edward Marston, the gentle minister, offer her human -- and carnal -- love.
Hazel's fate unfolds as simply and relentlessly as a Greek tragedy as a child of nature is drawn into a world of mortal passion in which she must eternally be a stranger.

"Once again it rang out, and at its awful reiteration the righteous men and the hunt ceased to be people of any class or time or creed, and became creatures swayed by one primeval passion - fear. They crouched and shuddered like beaten dogs as the terrible cry once more roused the shivering echoes: 'Gone to earth Gone to earth '" Mary Webb's second novel, first published in 1917, is one of the most unusual of the twentieth century. It is strikingly modern in some of its themes, but is also markedly a rural fable. It is as if a west country medieval storyteller had whispered in the ear of...

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...

A bold reissue of a stunning novel in the tradition of Thomas Hardy and the Brontes - and a perennial favourite on the Virago Modern Classics list.