Stella Gibbons at Cold Comfort Farm", failed to equal the impact of the original. When the collection was reissued many years later it was described as "oddly comforting and amusing ... and possibly a truer depiction of the times than we might think". Gibbons published three novels during the war: "The Rich House" (1941), "Ticky" (1942) and "The Bachelor" (1944). "Ticky", a satire on mid-nineteenth century army life, was Gibbons's favourite of all her novels, although she acknowledged that hardly anyone liked it. It failed commercially, despite a favourable review in "The Times Literary Supplement". Oliver surmises that "the middle of the
Stella Gibbons mockery of contemporary and indeed future artistic and intellectual trends, before the male Starkadders return from overseas, wreck the centre and restore the farm to its original primitive state. The book was moderately successful but, Oliver remarks, does not compare with the original. In 1950 Gibbons published her "Collected Poems", and in the same year was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Throughout the 1950s she continued, at roughly two-year intervals, to produce politely received novels, none of which created any particular stir. Among these was "Fort of the Bear" (1953), in which she departed from her