Stella Gibbons "Cold Comfort Farm"; it mentions none of her other works—while providing her "bêtes noires" Morgan and Mary Webb with full entries. To Gibbons, "Cold Comfort Farm" became "That Book" or "You-Know-What", its title never mentioned. Despite her growing irritation and expressed distaste for it, the book continued to be lauded by successive generations of critics, Boston described it as "one of those rare books of comic genius that imprints itself on the brain and can never afterwards be eradicated". A more negative view of the book has been expressed by the literary critic Mary Beard, who considers it "a rather
By the Great Horn Spoon! By the Great Horn Spoon! "By The Great Horn Spoon!" is a children's novel about the gold rush by Sid Fleischman, published in 1963. The story takes place in the California Gold Rush. A twelve-year-old boy named Jack, who has lived with his Aunt Arabella since his parents died, heads to [California] to search for gold after Aunt Arabella loses all her money. He is accompanied by Aunt Arabella's butler, Praiseworthy. As the novel opens, they are stowaways on a ship, "The Lady Wilma", hiding in Mr. Azariah Jones' eighteen potato barrels. On the second day, Jack and Praiseworthy turn