Stella Gibbons

Stella Dorothea Gibbons was an English author, journalist, and poet. She established her reputation with her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm. Gibbons had a turbulent and often unhappy childhood. After an indifferent school career she trained as a journalist and worked as a reporter.

About Stella Gibbons in brief

Stella Dorothea Gibbons was an English author, journalist, and poet. She established her reputation with her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, which has been reprinted many times. Gibbons had a turbulent and often unhappy childhood. After an indifferent school career she trained as a journalist and worked as a reporter and features writer, mainly for the Evening Standard and The Lady. Her first book, published in 1930, was a collection of poems which was well received, and through her life she considered herself primarily a poet rather than a novelist. Her style has been praised by critics for its charm, barbed humour and descriptive skill, and has led to comparison with Jane Austen. She and her works have not been accepted into the canon of English literature—partly, other writers have suggested, because of her detachment from the literary world and her tendency to mock it. She was active as a writer for half a century, but none of her later 22 novels or other literary worksachieved the same critical or popular success. Much of her work was long out of print before a modest revival in the 21st century. She is buried in Kensal Rise, north London, with her husband and three sons, Gerald, Lewis and Lewis Gibbons, and her mother, Maude Williams, in Kentish Town, North London. She died at the age of 89 in 1998. She had a daughter,  Stephanie, who went on to become one of the most successful writers of the 20th century, and a son, David, who became a film director.

She also had two sons, Gerald and Lewis, who died in 2005 and 2007 respectively, and two daughters, Julie and Sophie, both of whom have gone on to success in film and television. Her husband Telford Gibbons died in 2008, and she died in 2012, aged 89, at her home in London, where she had lived with her family for most of her life. She left school in 1921 with a Diploma in Journalism, and on leaving in 1921 began a two-year course in English Literature at University College London. As well as English Literature, the course covered economics, politics, science and practical skills as well as practical skills such as shorthand, shorthand and languages. She became the honorary secretary of the Debating Society’s Debating Club, and was vice-president of the Senior Dramatic Club. In 1917 she joined the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry winner, the future Stevie Smith, who joined the same year. She wrote stories for her fellow-pils, featuring prominently in the school’s Debatic Club and in the Senior Debating society’s Debation Club. Her novels were popular in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Most of Gibbons’s novels were based within the middle-class suburban world with which she was familiar. Her father was a doctor, and his wife Alice had six children, the second of whom was born in 1869 and was known by his fourth Christian name of \”Telford\”.

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