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
Ada Brodsky via Trieste. At Ben Shemen, Neumark received an education in which music, theatre and literature played a major role. She, with the other children, were also closely involved in agricultural work. Ada translated between the local Hebrew-speaking children and the new arrivals from Germany. Neumark's parents needed a visa from the British Mandate in Palestine to emigrate there. This was a costly affair, requiring around £1,000 or 12,500 Reichsmarks, which they did not have. Ada's aunt who was already in Palestine collected the monies with great difficulty, and a relative with British citizenship had to personally deliver it in Germany