Stella Gibbons more novels, as well as two poetry collections, a children's book, and a number of short stories. From November 1936 the family home was in Oakshott Avenue, on the Holly Lodge Estate off Highgate West Hill, where Gibbons regularly worked in the mornings from ten until lunchtime. Her novels were generally well received by critics and the public, though none earned the accolades or attention that had been given to "Cold Comfort Farm"; readers of "The Times" were specifically warned not to expect Gibbons's second novel, "Bassett" (1934), to be a repetition of the earlier masterpiece. "Enbury Heath" (1935) is
Stella Gibbons Second World War was perhaps the wrong time to satirise ... the ridiculous and dangerous rituals that surround the male aggressive instinct". "The Bachelor" won critical praise for its revealing account of life in war-torn Britain—as did several of Gibbons's postwar novels. Gibbons's first postwar novel was "Westwood" (1946). The book incorporates a comic depiction of the novelist Charles Morgan, whose novel "The Fountain" Gibbons had reviewed before the war and found "offensive as well as wearisome". In "Westwood", Morgan appears in the guise of the novelist "Gerald Challis", a pompous, humourless bore. Oliver considers this characterisation to be one