Stella Gibbons full-time writing career. In March 1931 Gibbons had become engaged to Allan Webb, a budding actor and opera singer five years her junior. He was the son of a cricketing parson, and the grandson of Allan Becher Webb, a former Bishop of Bloemfontein who served as Dean of Salisbury Cathedral. On 1 April 1933 the couple were married at St Matthew's, Bayswater. Later that year she learned that "Cold Comfort Farm" had been awarded the "Prix Étranger", the foreign novel category of the prestigious French literary prize, the "Prix Femina". It had won against works by two more experienced writers,
Abigail Hopper Gibbons and children led Gibbons to found the New York Diet Kitchen (to serve infants, the elderly and the poor). She had also served as president of the New York Committee for the Prevention and Regulation of Vice, directed to control prostitution, drinking and gambling. Gibbons died of pneumonia in New York in 1893, aged 91. She was eulogized in her obituary as "one of the most remarkable women of the century" for her work in noted reform movements. She is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Abigail Hopper Gibbons Abigail Hopper Gibbons, neé Abigail Hopper (December 7, 1801