The novelist Mary Webb is as closely identified with the countryside of her native Shropshire as Thomas Hardy is with Dorset and the Brontes are with Yorkshire.
Mary was born in 1881. Between 1916 and her early death in 1927, she wrote six novels - her best-known is Precious Bane - set in the countryside she loved so much, as well as poems, essays and short stories. Her work was inspired by the the natural landscape, her depiction of her own disabilities and her writings on behaviour which are outside the moral codes of her times.
As a new theatre production of Mary Webb's novel Gone To Earth opens in Brighton, Judi Herman went high into the Shropshire hills, to meet her biographer, Gladys Mary Coles.
Gone to Earth opens in Brighton on 25 March and then is on tour at selected theatres round the country. See the Shared Experience website for details
