Stella Gibbons full-time writing career. In March 1931 Gibbons had become engaged to Allan Webb, a budding actor and opera singer five years her junior. He was the son of a cricketing parson, and the grandson of Allan Becher Webb, a former Bishop of Bloemfontein who served as Dean of Salisbury Cathedral. On 1 April 1933 the couple were married at St Matthew's, Bayswater. Later that year she learned that "Cold Comfort Farm" had been awarded the "Prix Étranger", the foreign novel category of the prestigious French literary prize, the "Prix Femina". It had won against works by two more experienced writers,
Stella Gibbons This parody, in the newly fashionable "vers libre" style, was her first published literary work. During the next two years she contributed further poems and prose to the magazine, including "The Doer, a Story in the Russian Manner", which foreshadows her later novels in both theme and style. Gibbons completed her course in the summer of 1923, and was awarded her diploma. Gibbons's first job was with the British United Press (BUP) news agency, where she decoded overseas cables which she rewrote in presentable English. During slack periods she practised at writing articles, stories and poems. She made her first