Stella Gibbons "she applied her versatility as a writer to every subject under the sun bar cookery, which was the province of a certain Mrs Peel." At the same time she began work on the novel that would become "Cold Comfort Farm"; her colleague and friend Elizabeth Coxhead recorded that Gibbons "neglected her duties disgracefully" to work on this project. In her time with "The Lady", Gibbons established a reputation as a caustic book reviewer, and was particularly critical of the then fashionable "loam and lovechild" rural novels. Novelists such as Mary Webb and Sheila Kaye-Smith had achieved considerable popularity through their
Stella Jones (writer) Stella Jones (writer) Stella Marjorie Jones (née Claridge, 5 April 1904 – 6 June 1991) was a New Zealand playwright and writer. Jones was born in Kimbolton, near Feilding, New Zealand. She had six sisters and two brothers and her parents were Louise Mary Claridge (née Taylor) and James Henry Claridge. She grew up in a variety of small towns around the country, as her father was a newspaper editor and worked on a number of regional and small-town papers. In 1931, she married Arthur Thomas Jones. Jones began her career writing short stories and articles which were published in