Stella Gibbons of Gibbons's "most enjoyable and vicious" satirical portraits. In her introduction to the book's 2011 reprint, Lynne Truss describes it as "a rich, mature novel, romantic and wistful, full of rounded characters and terrific dialogue" that deserved more commercial success than it received. The public's expectations were still prejudiced by "Cold Comfort Farm", which by 1949 had sold 28,000 copies in hardback and 315,000 in paperback. Anticipating that a sequel would be popular, that year Gibbons produced "Conference at Cold Comfort Farm", her shortest novel, in which the farm has become a conference centre and tourist attraction. There is much
Stella Gibbons died from heart disease aggravated by heavy drinking. Gibbons was now the family's principal breadwinner; her youngest brother Lewis was still at school, while the elder, Gerald, was intermittently employed as an actor. The three set up home in a cottage on the Vale of Health, a small settlement in the middle of Hampstead Heath, with literary connections to Keats (whom Gibbons revered), Leigh Hunt and D. H. Lawrence. Later that year, as a result of an error involving the calculation and reporting of foreign exchange rates, Gibbons was sacked from the BUP, but quickly found a new position as