Mary Webb has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators. The most-rated is Precious Bane.
Precious Bane
Summary
A haunting tale of passion set in Shropshire in the 1800s. Born at the time of Waterloo in the wild countryside of Shropshire, England, Prudence Sarn is a passionate girl, cursed with a harelip - her “precious bane”. She is cursed for it, too, by the superstitious people among whom she lives. Prue loves two things: the remote countryside of her birthplace and, hopelessly, Kester Woodseaves, the weaver. The tale of how Kester gradually discerns Prue’s true beauty is set against the tragic drama of Prue’s brother, Gideon, a man who is out of harmony with the natural world and whose recklessness may ensnare them all in tragedy. Winner of the 1926 Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Prize, which was similarly awarded to such books as Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, and Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm, Precious Bane is a novel that haunts us with its beauty and its timeless truths about our deepest hopes.
Public Domain (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
Mr. Tallent's Ghost
Summary
Mary Webb (1881-1927) was an English Romantic novelist, short story writer and poet whose work is set chiefly in Shropshire. 'Mr. Tallent's Ghost' is an amusing tale about an eccentric writer who likes to read his appalling and tedious novels aloud to his relatives...or indeed anyone who will listen. He persuades a lawyer to draw up a will devoting his entire fortune to funding the publication of his writing. Shortly after this, news of Mr. Tallent's death arrives. The disinherited relations dispute the will vigorously, and soon after this, the ghost of Mr. Tallent begins to haunt the relatives and the executor. Worse still, the ghost is reading his dreadful novels to them aloud. One by one the relatives are consigned to mental institutions. The lawyer, who is also Mr. Tallent's executor, holds out longest...and then he makes an extraordinary discovery.
Public Domain (P)2016 Red Door Audiobooks
Precious Bane
Summary
Set in rural Shropshire shortly after the Napoleonic Wars, Precious Bane is narrated by the central character, Prue Sarn, whose life is blighted by having a harelip. Only the weaver, Kester Woodseaves, perceives the beauty of her character, but Prue cannot believe herself worthy of him. Her brother, Gideon, is overridingly ambitious to attain wealth and power, regardless of who suffers while he does so. Gideon is set to wed his sweetheart, Jancis, but he incurs the wrath of her father, the cruel and scheming self-proclaimed wizard Beguildy. An act of vengeance by Beguildy makes Gideon reject Jancis and tragedy overwhelms them both. Prue is wrongly accused of murder and set upon by a mob, but Kester defies them and carries Prue away to the happiness she believed she could never possess because of her harelip.
Public Domain (P)2010 Saland Publishing