|
|
|
|
|
Mary Webb. “A Gossip about Shropshire Folklore.” Prose manuscript, twenty leaves, several different sizes of off-white laid and wove paper, black ink, rectos only, with numerous ink and pencil corrections. The title is written in pencil, and below it is written (also in pencil): “Most important. Sources of The Golden Arrow, Precious / Bane, Gone to Earth.” In Webb’s essay “New Year’s Customs” (published December 27, 1924 in T. P. and Cassell’s Weekly), she states: “there are many ideas of humanity expressed in books or in folklore which are immortal, shining out like lamps beyond their dark century.” With original eleven-page typescript of the essay. “Mary’s understanding of the growth of legend, the psychological source and significance of myth, was inherent in her mystical disposition, in the swift, intuitive apprehension which brought her to a unity with the collective past embodied in nature” (Coles, The Flower of Light, p. 72). Bookplate of Frederick Baldwin Adams, Jr.