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
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