(25 April 2013 – from Dee, LibraryThing Virago Group)

The title piece is a literally spell-binding unfinished novel written in a convincing medieval vernacular (like T.H. White for grown-ups?) and as full of weird happenings, religious symbolism and mysticism, courtly love and gentle knights as a Middle English or Old English epic poem. Also heavy and redolent with the Shropshire dialect, a real tour de force that loses something, true, but not everything, by the abrupt breaking-off. Some of the scenes in this book will stay with me for a good while, and the writing, while I’m sure it is not to everyone’s taste, is pretty amazing.

This long piece is accompanied by a set of short stories, some a couple of pages long, others more substantial: as the Introduction points out, some are like drafts for longer works, others are complete in themselves. They are full of the concerns of her novels: love, truth, death, mystical connections, long memories, lonely cottages in the brooding landscape, and familiar Webb themes of loss, fate and irony. “In Affection and Esteem” is almost unbearably poignant, although none of them are exactly jolly, but a connection to land and myth make them satisfying.

Curiously, the Introduction reminds us that Webb was not Hardy or Lawrence. I’m not sure what business a Virago Modern Classic introduction has in comparing her to the male canon. She has a peculiar mysticism and yes, an earthy, female feel which is different from them, not better or worse. She was gently mocked in “Cold Comfort Farm” (but so were the boys) and I personally find a lot to enjoy in Webb’s peculiar and dramatic work.

Deaccessioning via Virago Group. ( )

I'm torn about how to 'rate' Armour - it's original and strange and the use of language is a marvel and the descriptions of nature are heady and intoxicating, all the same but I was not particularly engaged by the 'stories' themselves. I don't think, however, that character development and other modern fictional tropes were Webb's concern or interest - hers was in creating a mood so strong you could be transported into the 'place' itself. The style of writing brings to mind the writing of Mary Butts in Ashe of Rings, another work off the beaten track. ***1/2 ( )