Stella Gibbons detestation of pomposity and pretence. Truss has described Gibbons as "the Jane Austen of the 20th century", a parallel which the novelist Malcolm Bradbury thought apt; Flora Poste in "Cold Comfort Farm", with her "higher common sense", is "a Jane-ite heroine transformed into a clear-eyed modern woman". Bradbury also observed that many of Gibbons's novels end in Austen-like nuptials. Truss highlights the importance that Gibbons places on detachment as a necessary adjunct to effective writing: "Like many a good doctor, she seems to have considered sympathy a peculiar and redundant emotion, and a terrible waste of time." This matter-of-fact quality
Stella Gibbons depictions of country life; Webb was a favourite of the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Gibbons had first become familiar with the genre when she provided summaries of Webb's "The Golden Arrow" for the "Evening Standard's" 1928 serialisation. She found the writing overblown and the plotting ridiculous, and decided that her own first novel would be a comic parody of the genre. By February 1932 she had completed the manuscript and delivered it to her publishers, Longmans. Gibbons's chosen title for her novel had been "Curse God Farm", before her friend Elizabeth Coxhead, who had connections in the Hinckley district