The Prize: From their pens to your ears, genius in every story

Mary Gladys Meredith was born on 25th March 1881 at Leighton Lodge in the village of Leighton, near Shrewsbury in Shropshire.

Mary was home-schooled by her father before being sent to a finishing school in Southport in 1895. Her longs walks in the countryside helped her develop a heightened sense of observation and description, of both people and places, which later infused both her poetry and prose.

When she was 20 she developed symptoms of Graves' disease, a thyroid disorder that caused bu...