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
The Water Gipsies (novel) The Water Gipsies (novel) The Water Gipsies is a romantic comedy novel by the British writer A. P. Herbert, which was first published in 1930. It portrays the adventures of Jane Bell and her sister Lily, who operate a barge along England's rivers and canals. Jane enjoys several romantic entanglements during the story. The novel is Herbert's best-known work, and reflected his lifelong love of British waterways. He lived in Hammersmith Terrace, and a thinly disguised version of "The Dove" pub appears as "The Pigeons". In 1932 the novel was made into a film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring