Stella Gibbons "she applied her versatility as a writer to every subject under the sun bar cookery, which was the province of a certain Mrs Peel." At the same time she began work on the novel that would become "Cold Comfort Farm"; her colleague and friend Elizabeth Coxhead recorded that Gibbons "neglected her duties disgracefully" to work on this project. In her time with "The Lady", Gibbons established a reputation as a caustic book reviewer, and was particularly critical of the then fashionable "loam and lovechild" rural novels. Novelists such as Mary Webb and Sheila Kaye-Smith had achieved considerable popularity through their
Stella Gibbons the reader's delectation and mirth". One critic found it hard to accept that so well-developed a parody was the work of a scarcely known woman writer, and speculated that "Stella Gibbons" was a pen-name for Evelyn Waugh. Gibbons suddenly found herself in demand in literary circles and from fellow writers, raised to a celebrity status that she found distasteful. She acquired an agent, who advised her that she could confidently expect a regular and comfortable income as a novelist. This assurance prompted her, at the end of 1932, to resign her position with "The Lady" and to embark on a