The Country Life (novel) The Country Life (novel) The Country Life is a comedic novel by Rachel Cusk, first published in 1997, which draws on Stella Gibbons' "Cold Comfort Farm" and Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre". It won a 1998 Somerset Maugham Award. The novel is a comedy that draws on both "Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons and "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë. Stella Benson, the first-person narrator, abruptly abandons her life in London to take a position as carer to Martin, the wheelchair-bound teenage son of the wealthy and eccentric Madden family, in a farm near a small village in rural Sussex. The
Charles Gibbons for the Postal Telegraph Company. In 1932 he started The Minute Man Messenger Service. In 1940, Gibbons was an unsuccessful candidate for the Stoneham, Massachusetts Board of Selectmen. He ran again the following year and was elected easily. In 1942 he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Gibbons soon became a major figure in state Republican politics. In 1949 he was elected Republican floor leader and four years later was elected Speaker of the House. The Republicans lost control of the House in 1955 and Gibbons spent the next two years as Minority Leader. In 1956, Gibbons was