Between 1916 and her early death in 1927, Mary Webb produced novels which portrayed in realistic detail the people, customs, and superstitions of rural Shropshire. In her vivid descriptions she created not only the beauty of the Shropshire plains and the overwhelming presence of the high rock formations but also the mystery and spiritual power the region held for her--power that she portrayed as both bane and blessing in the lives of her characters. Webb's fascination with psychology and mysticism emerges in all her fiction and poetry. She explores intuitive apprehension of truth, rural superstitions and legends, prototypical myths that recur in many literatures and religions, and the creative--or destructive--interaction between nature and the innermost being of the sensitive individual. Mary Webb's prose possesses the symmetry, the complex symbolism, and the compression of thought and symbol which one associates with poetry. In remarking on the aesthetic effect of Webb's peculiar...