The House in Dormer Forest [antikvár]

Introduction Many of the best things in life seem to come to us simply by chance, and it was certainly chance which first brought, me into contact with Mary Webb. On the eve of departure some years ago for Australia I was given Precious Bane by a friend whose opinion I greatly trust, and it so impressed me that, in addition to recommending it to all my friends, I wrote to the author and told her that I had read nothing more inspiring in modern literature. This started what to me was a most interesting correspondence, and I shall always remember that when I was ill just before I retired from St. Martin-in-the-Fields she brought me a bunch of wild flowers which she had picked herself - it was so expressive of her nature to choose wild flowers instead of the more formal stock-in-trade of the florist. So it is particularly pleasing to be asked to write a foreword to one of her books, though I cannot write as a literary specialist, but only as an ordinary and very grateful reader. I must confess that modern fiction as a whole gives me little encouragement or pleasure, and therefore when I first read Mary Webb's novels it seemed to me that I had made a rare discovery. Here was an author who had more than an empty story to tell, whose writing was so sincere and so obviously the unforced product of an unusually sensitive imagination that to read her books was to experience a vivid human contact. She had visions to share with those who cared to follow her, and subsequent re-reading has only strengthened my first impressions of her work. For the moment I will say nothing of the peculiar beauty of her nature-imagery, since the essential quality of her writing is primarily a passionate sincerity rare in h.d.f. 9 a*