''The House in Dormer Forest'' is a 1920

romance novel A romance novel or romantic novel generally refers to a type of genre fiction novel which places its primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and usually has an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Pr ...

by the British writer

Mary Webb Mary Gladys Webb (25 March 1881 – 8 October 1927) was an English romance novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people whom she knew. Her ...

. It was part of a wave of regional novels set across Britain, in Webb's case in her native

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

.Baldick p.18 She wrote it while living at her home near

Bayston Hill Bayston Hill is a large village and civil parish in central Shropshire, England. It is south of the county town Shrewsbury and located on the main A49 road, the Shrewsbury to Hereford road. Occupied continuously since before the Middle Ages, ...

. It was one of several works that inspired the later parody novel ''

Cold Comfort Farm ''Cold Comfort Farm'' is a comic novel by English author Stella Gibbons, published in 1932. It parodies the romanticised, sometimes doom-laden accounts of rural life popular at the time, by writers such as Mary Webb. Plot summary Following ...

'' by Stella Gibbons.

Synopsis

The plot follows the lives of the Darke family, now headed by Solomon Darke, who have lived in the now crumbling Dormer House since the

Elizabethan Era The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personific ...

References

Bibliography

* Baldick, Chris. ''Literature of the 1920s: Writers Among the Ruins, Volume 3''. Edinburgh University Press, 2015. * Radford, Andrew. ''The Lost Girls: Demeter-Persephone and the Literary Imagination, 1850-1930''. BRILL, 2007. * Stringer, Jenny & Sutherland, John. ''The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Literature in English''. Oxford University Press, 1996. 1920 British novels Novels by Mary Webb British romance novels Hutchinson (publisher) books Novels set in Shropshire {{1920s-romance-novel-stub