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
Carroll Gibbons hundreds of popular songs (many of which were sung by Anne Lenner) between June 1932 and his death in 1954, all featuring Gibbons on piano. Starting in about 1931, he also recorded many sophisticated records featuring a piano-led small group playing pop tunes and medleys under the name of "Carroll Gibbons and his Boy Friends", of which some contained tracks by singer Hildegarde. As a composer, Gibbons's most popular songs included "A Garden in the Rain" (1928) and "On The Air" (1932). The latter was covered by Rudy Vallée in 1933 and by Lud Gluskin in 1936. Gibbons' instrumental numbers