Stella Gibbons unhappy childhood. After an indifferent school career she trained as a journalist, and worked as a reporter and features writer, mainly for the "Evening Standard" and "The Lady". Her first book, published in 1930, was a collection of poems which was well received, and through her life she considered herself primarily a poet rather than a novelist. After "Cold Comfort Farm", a satire on the genre of rural-themed "loam and lovechild" novels popular in the late 1920s, most of Gibbons's novels were based within the middle-class suburban world with which she was familiar. Gibbons became a Fellow of the Royal
Stella Gibbons measure although Gibbons, in later life, suspected other reasons, particularly the increasing distraction from work that arose from her relationship with Walter Beck. The engagement had ended painfully in 1928, primarily because Gibbons was looking for a fully committed relationship whereas he wanted something more open. Her biographer and nephew, Reggie Oliver, believes Gibbons never entirely got over Beck, even after 1929 when she met Allan Webb, her future husband. She was not unemployed for long; she quickly accepted a job offer as an editorial assistant at the women's magazine, "The Lady". Here, according to "The Observer" writer Rachel Cooke,