Stella Gibbons "Cold Comfort Farm"; it mentions none of her other works—while providing her "bêtes noires" Morgan and Mary Webb with full entries. To Gibbons, "Cold Comfort Farm" became "That Book" or "You-Know-What", its title never mentioned. Despite her growing irritation and expressed distaste for it, the book continued to be lauded by successive generations of critics, Boston described it as "one of those rare books of comic genius that imprints itself on the brain and can never afterwards be eradicated". A more negative view of the book has been expressed by the literary critic Mary Beard, who considers it "a rather
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