Genre: Essays & Short Works
Chapter: 9
Listen: 2
Mary Webb was a novelist and poet and two of her novels “Gone to Earth” and “Precious Bane” have been successfully adapted for film and television. She was passionate about nature and particularly the Shropshire countryside where she grew up and spent much of her life. At the age of 20, she was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease known as Graves’ disease, a thyroid condition. She was often confined to her bed but came to believe that her love of and connection with nature helped in her healing. “The Spring of Joy: A Little Book of Healing” published in 1917 is a collection of essays which celebrate the natural world with poetic and descriptive brilliance. It was actually written some years earlier while she was recovering from her first bout of illness. Her dedication for the book reads: TO THE WEARY AND WOUNDED IN THE BATTLE OF LIFE THIS LITTLE BOOK IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED – Summary by Noel Badrian