Her mother, Sarah Alice, was descended from a family related to Scottish author and poet Sir Walter Scott.

Mary explored the countryside around her childhood home and developed a sense of detailed observation and description, of both people and places, which later infused her poetry and prose.

[3] Her parents moved the family again in Shropshire, north to Stanton upon Hine Heath in 1896, before settling in 1902 at Meole Brace, now on the outskirts of Shrewsbury.

[4] At the age of 20, she developed symptoms of Graves' disease, a thyroid disorder that resulted in bulging protuberant eyes and throat goitre.

Webb's first published writing was a five-verse poem, written on hearing news of the Shrewsbury rail accident in October 1907.

They lived for a time in Weston-super-Mare, before moving back to Mary's beloved Shropshire, where they worked as market gardeners until Henry secured a job as a teacher, first at Chester, then at the Priory Grammar School for Boys in Shrewsbury.

[6] The couple lived briefly in Rose Cottage in Hinton Lane and then at The Nills[7] in the village of Pontesbury between the years 1914 and 1916, during which time she wrote The Golden Arrow.

[12] After her death, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin brought about her commercial success when, at a dinner of the Royal Literary Fund in 1928, he referred to her as a neglected genius.

[13] Stella Gibbons's 1932 novel Cold Comfort Farm was a parody of Webb's work,[14] as well as of other "loam and lovechild" writers like Sheila Kaye-Smith and Mary E. Mann[15] and, further back, Thomas Hardy.