Stella Gibbons

Stella Dorothea Gibbons (born January 5, 1902 in London , † December 19, 1989 there ) was a British author, journalist and poet. Her fame, which continues to this day, is based on her debut work Cold Comfort Farm , a parodic novel whose theme, characters and plot are based on stories by authors such as Thomas Hardy , DH Lawrence and the Brontë siblings . The novel has been made into films or made for television several times and has found a place in the canon of comic British literature.

Life

Gibbons was the daughter of a London doctor and had a turbulent and often unhappy childhood and youth. After a less noticeable school career, she began to work as a journalist. Her reports and essays have appeared mostly in the Evening Standard and the British women's magazine The Lady . In 1930 she published her first volume of poetry, which was favorably received by the critics. Gibbons saw herself primarily as a poet, not a novelist. Most of her works deal with the life of the British middle class.

Gibbons was inducted into the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. In her writing style, critics emphasize the charm, the malicious wit and her ability to reproduce situations and people. This is why she has occasionally been compared to Jane Austen . Cold Comfort Farm's success overshadowed her writing career so much that the rest of her work was largely overlooked.

She established her reputation with her first novel Cold Comfort Farm (1932), for which she was awarded the Prix ​​Femina Étranger . The novel - a parody of romantic and sometimes very dramatic stories that were popular at the time - is one of the classics of British literature of the 20th century. The novel was ranked 88 in the BBC Big Read poll , a 2003 list of Britain's favorite books created by the British broadcaster BBC. The British newspaper The Guardian included the novel in its list of the 1000 must-read novels in 2009. British critic Robert McCrum again voted it one of the 100 Most Influential English-Language Novels in 2014, citing the influence the novel had on subsequent British writers. McGrum puts the novel on par with Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 classic Three Men in One Boat , but points out that, unlike this comic novel, Cold Comfort Farm found a reading audience almost exclusively in Great Britain.

Although Gibbons was active as a writer for almost half a century, neither her later 22 novels nor her poetry found recognition comparable to her first work. She herself increasingly distanced herself from her great success. Gibbons compared him in an essay entitled Genesis of a Novel for the British satirical magazine Punch with a non-ignorable old uncle, be grateful needs because it such a rich pocket money make available, which also frequently embarrassing and be boring.

In Great Britain, too, much of her work was out of print for decades, but has made a modest comeback since the beginning of the 21st century.

Works

The year and publisher of the British first publication are given.

Novels

• Cold Comfort Farm . Longmans, London 1932, OCLC 488370934 .
  • German translation (with the same title): Ullstein, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-548-24349-5 .
• Bassett . Longmans, London 1934, OCLC 1268745 .
• Enbury Heath . Longmans, London 1935, OCLC 771331617 .
• Miss Linsey and Pa . Longmans, London 1936, OCLC 771331622 .
• Nightingale Wood . Longmans, London 1938, OCLC 855282998 .
  • German translation: The summer night ball . Manhattan, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-442-54726-5 .
• My American . Longmans, London 1939, OCLC 3352997 .
• The rich house . Longmans, London 1941, OCLC 4598606 .
• Ticky . Longmans, London 1943, OCLC 3349161 .
• The Bachelor . Longmans, London 1944, OCLC 3656831 .
• Westwood, or The Gentle Powers . Longmans, London 1946, OCLC 560579821 .
• The matchmaker . Longmans, London 1949, OCLC 752953786 .
• Conference at Cold Comfort Farm . Longmans 1949, London, OCLC 2550483 .
• The Swiss Summer . Longmans, London 1951, OCLC 3347559 .
• Fort of the Bear . Longmans, London 1953, OCLC 1268712 .
• The Shadow of a Sorcerer . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1955, OCLC 3298907 .
• Here Be Dragons . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1956, OCLC 3356228 .
• White sand and gray sand . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1958, OCLC 4590193 .
• A pink front door . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1959, OCLC 5755768 .
• The Weather at Tregulla . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1962, OCLC 3372249 .
• The Wolves Were in the Sledge . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1964, OCLC 5755731 .
• The Charmers . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1965, OCLC 560578870 .
• Starlight . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1967, OCLC 560579737 .
• The Snow Woman . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1968, ISBN 0-340-04264-8 .
• The Woods in winter . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1970, ISBN 0-340-10570-4 .

Short stories

• Roaring Tower and other stories . Longmans, London 1937, OCLC 6705456 .
• Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm and other stories . Longmans, London 1940, OCLC 771331616 .
• Beside the Pearly Water . Peter Nevill, London 1954, OCLC 6922440 .

Children's books

• The Untidy Gnome . Longmans, London 1935, OCLC 560579789 .

Poetry

• The Mountain Beast . Longmans, London 1930.
• The Priestess and other poems . Longmans, London 1934, OCLC 7123475 .
• The Lowland Venus . Longmans, London 1938, OCLC 10421672 .
• Collected poems . Longmans, London 1950, OCLC 3372203 .

literature

• Oliver, Reggie (1998). Out of the Woodshed: The Life of Stella Gibbons . London: Bloomsbury Publications. ISBN 0-7475-3995-2 .

Single receipts

1. ↑ Oliver, p. 129.
2. ↑ 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read: The Definitive List , accessed November 1, 2014.
3. ↑ The Guardian: The 100 best Novels: no.57 - Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932) , accessed November 12, 2014.
4. ↑ Quoted from The Guardian: The 100 best Novels: no. 57 - Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932) , accessed on November 12, 2014, Gibbons originally spoke of “some unignorable old uncle, to whom you have to be grateful because he makes you a handsome allowance, but who is often an embarrassment and a bore ”.