A collection of tender meditations on the restorative power of nature, Mary Webb’s beautiful poems and lyrical essays were written from a place of profound love for the English countryside.
Price range: £4.99 through £23.99
Price range: £4.99 through £23.99
| Author |
Mary Webb |
|---|---|
| Imprint |
Ragged Hand |
| Categories |
English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Poetry Nature Poetry Poetry Poetry & Drama Poetry by Women |
| ISBN | 9781528724562, 9781528774710, 9781528756143 |
| Formats Available | |
| Pages | 202 |
| Publication Date | 23 July 2026 |
| Weight | 244 kg |
| Dimensions | 5.5 × 8.5 in |
A collection of tender meditations on the restorative power of nature, Mary Webb’s beautiful poems and lyrical essays were written from a place of profound love for the English countryside.
“That is Mary Webb—one who had discovered ‘the core of sweetness in much bitter’—and while her poetry and prose reflect life’s tragedy, the light of a thankful heart shines forth.”
Composed during a period of personal convalescence, this collection of evocative poems and essays explores how the natural world offers solace to the weary soul. With Webb’s signature poetic prose, each piece reflects on the healing found in birdsong, wildflowers, and changing skies. Rather than grand philosophical treatise, Webb offers an intimate dialogue between the human spirit and the earth.
Ragged Hand gathers the verse and prose of Mary Webb (1881–1927) into a single beautiful edition: her selected poems set beside the essays of The Spring of Joy, first published in 1917 with an introduction by Walter de la Mare. A companion to return to in search of comfort, reflection, or renewal, this collection is a soothing literary balm.
Mary Webb (1881–1927) is best remembered today as a novelist, but she began as a poet and essayist, and it is in her verse and in the essays of The Spring of Joy that her ear for the English countryside rings most clearly. We have gathered both together here so the two sides of her work can be read side by side.
Ours is an edition made for returning to: small enough to carry into the fields she wrote about, considered enough to keep by the bedside. We are proud to bring Mary Webb’s poetry back to readers who love the great nature writers, and to offer it as the kind of companion given once and returned to for a lifetime.
“We need no great gifts – the most ignorant of us can draw deep breaths of inspiration from the soil.”
—Mary Webb, The Spring of Joy, 1917
“The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually.”
—Mary Webb, The Spring of Joy, 1917
“Dawn, seen through a sick woman’s window, however narrow, pulses with the same fresh wonder as it does over the whole width of the sea.”
—Mary Webb, The Spring of Joy, 1917
“No accident of environment or circumstance need cut us off from nature.”
—Mary Webb, The Spring of Joy, 1917
Webb dedicated The Spring of Joy ‘to the weary and wounded in the battle of life’. Her poems were gathered only after her death, and in 1928 her widower oversaw their first publication alongside these essays in a single volume. This edition follows that pairing, setting the poet beside the essayist.
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Price range: £4.99 through £23.99
A collection of tender meditations on the restorative power of nature, Mary Webb’s beautiful poems and lyrical essays were written from a place of profound love for the English countryside.
