Stella Gibbons detestation of pomposity and pretence. Truss has described Gibbons as "the Jane Austen of the 20th century", a parallel which the novelist Malcolm Bradbury thought apt; Flora Poste in "Cold Comfort Farm", with her "higher common sense", is "a Jane-ite heroine transformed into a clear-eyed modern woman". Bradbury also observed that many of Gibbons's novels end in Austen-like nuptials. Truss highlights the importance that Gibbons places on detachment as a necessary adjunct to effective writing: "Like many a good doctor, she seems to have considered sympathy a peculiar and redundant emotion, and a terrible waste of time." This matter-of-fact quality
Thomas Gibbons (hymn writer) Thomas Gibbons (hymn writer) Dr. Thomas Gibbons (1720–1785) was a London nonconformist minister who wrote hymns, sermons, and poetry. He was the son of Thomas Gibbons, at one time minister of a dissenting congregation at Olney in Buckinghamshire, and afterwards of a congregation at Royston in Hertfordshire. He was born at Reach, Cambridgeshire, on 31 May 1720, and went to local schools. At about 15 years of age he was sent to Abraham Taylor's dissenting academy in Deptford, and then to that of John Eames in Moorfields. In 1742 Gibbons was appointed assistant to the Rev. Thomas Bures, minister of