Stella Gibbons full-time writing career. In March 1931 Gibbons had become engaged to Allan Webb, a budding actor and opera singer five years her junior. He was the son of a cricketing parson, and the grandson of Allan Becher Webb, a former Bishop of Bloemfontein who served as Dean of Salisbury Cathedral. On 1 April 1933 the couple were married at St Matthew's, Bayswater. Later that year she learned that "Cold Comfort Farm" had been awarded the "Prix Étranger", the foreign novel category of the prestigious French literary prize, the "Prix Femina". It had won against works by two more experienced writers,
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle a necessary book, radiant and rapturous" and said that it "provides further evidence that he is a peer of Kafka, Proust and Joyce". According to David Eagleman, Nabokov named the title character in part after his favorite butterfly. An avid (and professional) collector of butterflies, Nabokov especially liked one species with yellow wings and a black body. As a synesthete, he associated colors with each letter; "A" with yellow, and "D" with black. Thus he saw a reflection of his favorite butterfly (yellow-black-yellow) in the name "Ada". His character, Ada, wanted to be a lepidopterist. "Ada" is also a pun,