Stella Gibbons of Gibbons's "most enjoyable and vicious" satirical portraits. In her introduction to the book's 2011 reprint, Lynne Truss describes it as "a rich, mature novel, romantic and wistful, full of rounded characters and terrific dialogue" that deserved more commercial success than it received. The public's expectations were still prejudiced by "Cold Comfort Farm", which by 1949 had sold 28,000 copies in hardback and 315,000 in paperback. Anticipating that a sequel would be popular, that year Gibbons produced "Conference at Cold Comfort Farm", her shortest novel, in which the farm has become a conference centre and tourist attraction. There is much
Stella Gibbons secretary to the editor of the London "Evening Standard". Within a short time she was promoted, and became a reporter and features writer at the then substantial salary of just under £500 a year, although she was not given a by-line until 1928. During her "Evening Standard" years, Gibbons persevered with poetry, and in September 1927 her poem "The Giraffes" appeared in "The Criterion", a literary magazine edited by T. S. Eliot. This work was read and admired by Virginia Woolf, who enquired if Gibbons would write poems for the Woolf publishing house, the Hogarth Press. In January 1928 ,