Gone to Earth

Gone to Earth

Mary Webb

English Classics

Mary Webb (25 March 1881 - 8 October 1927) was an English romantic novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people which she knew. Her novels have been successfully dramatized, most notably the film Gone to Earth in 1950 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. They inspired the famous parody Cold Comfort Farm.

Gone to Earth is the story of Hazel Woodus, a child of nature who simply wants to be herself, living among the remote Shropshire hills of the Welsh Marches with her harpist coffin-building father. She is reluctantly drawn into the world of romantic human relationships through her great beauty, marrying a local church minister, but also becomes the object of the local fox-hunting squire's obsessive love. Hazel is chased over the edge of a quarry trying to save her beloved pet fox from the local hunt. The title, of course, is the hutsman's cry denoting that the fox had escaped into its den. Gone to Earth was filmed in 1950 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, starring Jennifer Jones as Hazel Woodus. However, it was later re-edited, shortened and retitled for its American release, and fell into relative obscurity. In 1985, the full 110-minute restored version was released by the National Film Archive, to critical acclaim.