Stella Gibbons unhappy childhood. After an indifferent school career she trained as a journalist, and worked as a reporter and features writer, mainly for the "Evening Standard" and "The Lady". Her first book, published in 1930, was a collection of poems which was well received, and through her life she considered herself primarily a poet rather than a novelist. After "Cold Comfort Farm", a satire on the genre of rural-themed "loam and lovechild" novels popular in the late 1920s, most of Gibbons's novels were based within the middle-class suburban world with which she was familiar. Gibbons became a Fellow of the Royal
Alan Gibbons Alan Gibbons Alan Albert Gibbons (born 14 August 1953) is an English writer of children's books who has won a "Blue Peter" Book Award. He lives in Liverpool, England, where he used to teach in a primary school. His father was a farm labourer, but was hurt in an accident when Alan was eight years old. The family had to move to Crewe, Cheshire. He began to write for his pupils as a teacher, but never tried to get any of his work published. Gibbons trained to be a teacher in his mid-thirties and starting writing short stories for his