Established author Stella Gibbons

mock tudor houses on holly lodge estate, highgate, gibbons lived 1936 (2008 photograph)

during remainder of 1930s gibbons produced 5 more novels, 2 poetry collections, children s book, , number of short stories. november 1936 family home in oakshott avenue, on holly lodge estate off highgate west hill, gibbons regularly worked in mornings ten until lunchtime. novels received critics , public, though none earned accolades or attention had been given cold comfort farm; readers of times warned not expect gibbons s second novel, bassett (1934), repetition of earlier masterpiece. enbury heath (1935) relatively faithful account of childhood , adult life with, according oliver, thinnest veil of fictional gauze cover[ing] raw experience . miss linsey , pa (1936) thought nicola beauman, in analysis of women writers 1914 1939, parody radclyffe hall s 1928 lesbian novel of loneliness. gibbons s final prewar novels nightingale wood (1935)— cinderella brought right date —and american (1939), oliver considers escapist novel, variant of hans christian andersen s snow queen.

gibbons considered herself serious poet rather comic writer. published 2 collections of poetry in 1930s, latter of which, lowland verses (1938) contains marriage of machine , lament on effects of industrial pollution: oil, poison lulls/your wings , webs, cormorants , gulls? gibbons s single children s book fairy tale collection untidy gnome, published in 1935 , dedicated child laura, born year.

war years, 1939–45

the advent of war in september 1939 did not diminish gibbons s creative energy. in november began series of articles, woman s diary of war , st martin s review, journal of london church of st martin-in-the-fields. series ran until november 1943, , includes many of gibbons s private reflections on conflict. in october 1941 wrote: [t]he war has done me good ... dour satisfaction out of managing rations, salvaging, fire watching, , feeling trying work better world . in july 1940 webb enlisted in middlesex regiment, , following year commissioned king s royal rifle corps. later served overseas, in cairo.

the title story in gibbons s 1940 collection, christmas @ cold comfort farm, failed equal impact of original. when collection reissued many years later described oddly comforting , amusing ... , possibly truer depiction of times might think . gibbons published 3 novels during war: rich house (1941), ticky (1942) , bachelor (1944). ticky, satire on mid-nineteenth century army life, gibbons s favourite of novels, although acknowledged hardly liked it. failed commercially, despite favourable review in times literary supplement. oliver surmises middle of second world war perhaps wrong time satirise ... ridiculous , dangerous rituals surround male aggressive instinct . bachelor won critical praise revealing account of life in war-torn britain—as did several of gibbons s postwar novels.