Mary Gladys Meredith Webb

Mary Gladys Webb was an early twentieth-century English romance novelist and poet whose works are primarily set in the Shropshire countryside and feature Shropshire characters and people she knew. Her works have been effectively dramatized, most notably Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1950 film Gone to Earth, which was based on the same-titled novel. The novels are considered to have inspired Stella Gibbons' famous spoof Cold Comfort Farm (1932). She moved to Much Wenlock with her...See more

Mary Gladys Webb was an early twentieth-century English romance novelist and poet whose works are primarily set in the Shropshire countryside and feature Shropshire characters and people she knew. Her works have been effectively dramatized, most notably Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1950 film Gone to Earth, which was based on the same-titled novel. The novels are considered to have inspired Stella Gibbons' famous spoof Cold Comfort Farm (1932). She moved to Much Wenlock with her parents when she was one-year-old, and they lived in a house called The Grange outside of town. Mary was first taught by her father before being sent to a finishing school for females in Southport in 1895. Webb became a vegetarian as a child and despised the slaughter of animals. In 1896, her parents relocated the family to Stanton upon Hine Heath in Shropshire, eventually settling in 1902 at Meole Brace, which is now on the suburbs of Shrewsbury. At Stanton, she started writing poems and articles for the local parish magazine. See less