Stella Gibbons experience of school, Gibbons found university exhilarating and made numerous friendships, particularly with Ida Graves, an aspiring poet who, although on a different course, attended some of the same lectures. The two shared a love of literature and a taste for subversive humour. Graves lived until 1999, and recalled in an interview late in life that many of the jokes they shared found their way into "Cold Comfort Farm", as did some of their common acquaintances. Soon after Gibbons began the course she contributed a poem, "The Marshes of My Soul", to the December 1921 issue of "University College Magazine".
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