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
Stella Gibbons a leading voice in the "Georgian" poetry movement, began to publish Gibbons's poems in his magazine, "The London Mercury". Squire also persuaded Longmans to publish the first collection of Gibbons's verses, entitled "The Mountain Beast", which appeared in 1930 to critical approval. By this time her by-line was appearing with increasing frequency in the "Standard". As part of a series on "Unusual Women" she interviewed, among others, the former royal mistress Lillie Langtry. The paper also published several of Gibbons's short stories. Despite this evident industry, Gibbons was dismissed from the "Standard" in August 1930. This was ostensibly an economy