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Stella Gibbons

Biography

Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902. Her father was a doctor but he was also an alcoholic and the family grew up with financial worries as well as suffering from the father’s occasional violent behaviour. After attending North London Collegiate School for Girls, she went to University College, London, where she earned a diploma in journalism. She worked in journalism, while writing poetry, which was published in small magazines and then as a book, The Mountain Beast and Other Poems. Her great success was her second published work, Cold Comfort Farm, for which she received the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize. She wrote it in part as a riposte to Mary Webb, whose works she had reviewed earlier. She continued to write novels, stories and poetry but never had the success that she had had with Cold Comfort Farm and is now virtually only remembered for that book. She died in 1989.

Other web sites

Stella Gibbons
Stella Gibbons: Cold Comfort Farm was just the beginning
Her grave

Bibliography

1930 The Mountain Beast and Other Poems (poetry)
1932 Cold Comfort Farm (novel)
1933 Bassett (novel)
1933 The Priestess and Other Poems (poetry)
1935 Enbury Heath (novel)
1935 The Untidy Gnome (children’s)
1935 Miss Linsey and Pa (novel)
1937 Roaring Tower and Other Stories
1938 Nightingale Wood (novel)
1938 The Lowland Venus and Other Poems (poetry)
1939 My American (novel)
1940 Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm (stories)
1941 The Rich House (novel)
1943 Ticky (novel)
1944 The Bachelor (novel)
1946 Westwood (novel)
1949 The Matchmaker (novel)
1949 Conference at Cold Comfort Farm (novel)
1950 Collected Poems
1951 The Swiss Summer (novel)
1953 Fort of the Bear (novel)
1954 Beside the Pearly Water (stories)
1955 The Shadow of a Sorcerer (novel)
1956 Here Be Dragons (novel)
1958 White Sand and Grey Sand (novel)
1959 A Pink Front Door (novel)
1962 The Weather at Tregulla (novel)
1964 The Wolves Were in the Sledge (novel)
1965 The Charmers (novel)
1967 Starlight (novel)
1968 The Snow Woman (novel)
1970 The Woods in Winter (novel)