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
By the Great Horn Spoon! By the Great Horn Spoon! "By The Great Horn Spoon!" is a children's novel about the gold rush by Sid Fleischman, published in 1963. The story takes place in the California Gold Rush. A twelve-year-old boy named Jack, who has lived with his Aunt Arabella since his parents died, heads to [California] to search for gold after Aunt Arabella loses all her money. He is accompanied by Aunt Arabella's butler, Praiseworthy. As the novel opens, they are stowaways on a ship, "The Lady Wilma", hiding in Mr. Azariah Jones' eighteen potato barrels. On the second day, Jack and Praiseworthy turn