Stella Gibbons many years, when in 1965 she contributed an essay to "Light on C.S. Lewis", a review of that writer's work edited by Jocelyn Gibb. In 1966 she wrote an essay for "Punch", "Genesis of a Novel", in which she mused on the detrimental effect of "Cold Comfort Farm" on her long term career. She likened the book to "some unignorable old uncle, to whom you have to be grateful because he makes you a handsome allowance, but is often an embarrassment and a bore". Gibbons made her last overseas trip in 1966, to Grenoble in France where she visited her
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969. "Ada" began to materialize in 1959, when Nabokov was flirting with two projects, "The Texture of Time" and "Letters from Terra". In 1965, he began to see a link between the two ideas, finally composing a unified novel from February 1966 to October 1968. The published cumulation would become his longest work. "Ada" was initially given a mixed reception. But, writing in "The New York Times Book Review", noted scholar Alfred Appel called it "a great work of art,