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 a necessary book, radiant and rapturous" and said that it "provides further evidence that he is a peer of Kafka, Proust and Joyce". According to David Eagleman, Nabokov named the title character in part after his favorite butterfly. An avid (and professional) collector of butterflies, Nabokov especially liked one species with yellow wings and a black body. As a synesthete, he associated colors with each letter; "A" with yellow, and "D" with black. Thus he saw a reflection of his favorite butterfly (yellow-black-yellow) in the name "Ada". His character, Ada, wanted to be a lepidopterist. "Ada" is also a pun,