Stella Gibbons

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Standard Name: Gibbons, Stella
Birth Name: Stella Dorothea Gibbons
SG was a gifted comic writer whose lively, parodic first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, was such a success that it has tended to eclipse her later achievements. Much of her writing was inspired by the work of other women writers such as Mary Webb , Ouida , and Jane Austen , who served both as influences and as targets of burlesque. SG began her career as a journalist, and in addition to novels, she also wrote poems, short stories, and a book for children.
Black-and-white photo of Stella Gibbons, 28 November 1977. She is posing in front of bookshelves, looking off into the distance from behind tortoise-shell glasses.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Kate Clanchy
While the family was in Edinburgh, KC 's mother, Joan Clanchy , was the Headmistress of St George's School for Girls (which numbers Ménie Muriel Dowie among its distinguished former students).
Scott, Jane. “By Virtue Of An Explosive Arts Debut”. The Herald.
When KC 's...
Intertextuality and Influence Sheila Kaye-Smith
This novel brought critical and popular acclaim. SKS said that the weeks following its appearance were some of the happiest of her life.
Walker, Dorothea. Sheila Kaye-Smith. Twayne, 1980.
85
The Times Literary Supplement notice began: No matter what fine work...
Literary responses Mary Webb
This exemplifies the double-edged nature of MW 's reputation. On the one hand she has become almost synonymous in the public mind with the genre she made famous: the romantic, earthy, rural novel. Her early...
Publishing Elizabeth Goudge
After the appearance of her first novel, EG was taken up by Nancy Pearn and David Higham of the newly founded agents Pearn, Pollinger and Higham . They advised her to write short stories for...
Textual Features Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
This powerful novel belongs to the rural-inheritance genre, as practised about this time by Mary Webb and Sheila Kaye-Smith , and as later mocked by Stella Gibbons . Like the work of Webb and Kaye-Smith...
Textual Features Sue Townsend
Adrian Mole carried the genes of the British talent for humour, as formerly represented by Stella Gibbons and Angela Thirkell , but in a newly anarchic and ungenteel form. Like Richmal Crompton in the William...

Timeline

1904
Madame C. de Broutelles founded the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse, a prestigious French literary prize awarded by a jury of twelve women. A. Mary F. Robinson (an English writer living in France) was a co-founder.