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Mary Webb Collection
Portrait of Mary Webb
On some day of late January, when the honey-coloured west is full of soft grey cloud, when one lone minstrel thrush is chanting to the dying light, what is the thrill that shakes us? It is not only that the delicate traceries of silver birches are tenderly dark on the illumined sky, that a star springs out of it like darting quicksilver, that the music of tone and tint has echoed last April's song. It is something deeper than these. It is the sudden sense--keen and startling--of oneness with all beauty, seen and unseen.
~ excerpt from Vis Medicatrix Naturae, in The Spring of Joy
About the Collection
The Mary Webb Collection is held in the Rare Books Department of the Willis Library at the UNT in Denton, Texas. Most of the items in the Mary Webb Collection were gathered by Gustine Courson Weaver, who was a collector throughout her life. (Her collection of children's books forms the core of the Weaver Collection in the Rare Books Department.) After becoming acquainted with Mary Webb's work, Mrs. Weaver proceeded to purchase a number of Webb's publications as well as books about related subjects such as the town of Shrewsbury and the Rossetti family. Hilda Addison, one of Mary Webb's biographers, sent Mrs. Weaver a number of mementos, including an unpublished snap shot of Webb's gravesite. Mrs. Weaver herself traveled to Shropshire and collected additional items that are now part of the Mary Webb Collection. The Mary Webb Collection can be viewed by any interested person.