Join us on Monday, January 10, 2022, at 11AM to discuss Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, by Deepa Anaparra. The meeting will be held via Zoom. Contact Jean Demas, Literacy Librarian, at demasj@lislelibrary.org for details or to join our Booked for the Day Discussion Group.
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
December 21, 2015
It seems that Stella Gibbons did not like publicity and her book Cold Comfort Farm was a parody of the romanticized, sometimes doom-laden accounts of rural life popular at the time.
When she won the Prix etranger of the prix Femina vie Heureuse in 1934 some of her contemporaries were not too happy. The prize was £40 and was intended to "reward a strong and original piece of work, excellent in matter and in style, promising for the future, and calculated to reveal to French readers the true spirit and character of England." The aim was to encourage writers who were felt to be insufficiently known or appreciated.
The author, Virginia Woolf was not happy when Gibbons won and wrote to Elizabeth Bowen, who was also up for the award, “I was enraged to see they gave the £40 to Gibbons. Still, now you and Rosamond [Lehmann] can join in blaming her. Who is she? What is this book?"
It was said that Cold Comfort Farm was the greatest comic novel of the age. The BBC in connection with The Big Read made a list of the Top 200 Books and Cold Comfort Farm was number 88.
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