Stella Gibbons flashes of the novels' wit". Such lines as "my thoughts, like purple parrots / Brood / In the sick light" come dangerously close indeed to the overblown rhetoric she satirized in "Cold Comfort Farm": "How like yaks were your drowsy thoughts". The immediate and enduring success of "Cold Comfort Farm" dominated the rest of Gibbons's career. Neville thought that after so singular a success at the start of her career, the rest was something of an anticlimax, despite her considerable industry and undoubted skills. The 1985 edition of "The Oxford Companion to English Literature" defines Gibbons solely in terms of
Stella Dallas (novel) Stella Dallas (novel) Stella Dallas is a 1923 novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, written in response to the death of her three-year-old daughter from encephalitis. It tells the story of a woman who sacrifices her own happiness for the sake of her daughter. The novel was subsequently adapted into a stage play in 1924 and movies in 1925, 1937, and 1990, the latter titled "Stella" and starring Bette Midler. It was also the basis for the radio serial "Stella Dallas", which aired daily for 18 years and is often credited as being the first soap opera. Prouty was reportedly displeased