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
Abigail Hopper Gibbons and children led Gibbons to found the New York Diet Kitchen (to serve infants, the elderly and the poor). She had also served as president of the New York Committee for the Prevention and Regulation of Vice, directed to control prostitution, drinking and gambling. Gibbons died of pneumonia in New York in 1893, aged 91. She was eulogized in her obituary as "one of the most remarkable women of the century" for her work in noted reform movements. She is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Abigail Hopper Gibbons Abigail Hopper Gibbons, neé Abigail Hopper (December 7, 1801