Stella Gibbons experience of school, Gibbons found university exhilarating and made numerous friendships, particularly with Ida Graves, an aspiring poet who, although on a different course, attended some of the same lectures. The two shared a love of literature and a taste for subversive humour. Graves lived until 1999, and recalled in an interview late in life that many of the jokes they shared found their way into "Cold Comfort Farm", as did some of their common acquaintances. Soon after Gibbons began the course she contributed a poem, "The Marshes of My Soul", to the December 1921 issue of "University College Magazine".
Stella Gibbons mockery of contemporary and indeed future artistic and intellectual trends, before the male Starkadders return from overseas, wreck the centre and restore the farm to its original primitive state. The book was moderately successful but, Oliver remarks, does not compare with the original. In 1950 Gibbons published her "Collected Poems", and in the same year was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Throughout the 1950s she continued, at roughly two-year intervals, to produce politely received novels, none of which created any particular stir. Among these was "Fort of the Bear" (1953), in which she departed from her