Flora Poste, a recently orphaned socialite – expensively, athletically and lengthily educated – is peculiarly rich in relatives…and a lot of them are peculiar. Stella Gibbons died in 1989.A wickedly satirical portrait of British rural life in the 1930s. Amongst her other novels are Miss Linsey and Pa (1936), Nightingale Wood (1938), Westwood (1946), Conference at Cold Comfort Farm (1949) and Beside the Pearly Water (1954).

Her first publication was a book of poems, The Mountain Beast (1930), and her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm (1932), won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize. She then worked for ten years on various papers, including the Evening Standard. She went to North London Collegiate School and studied journalism at University College, London. Wodehouse and the comic aplomb of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop' Independent 'One of the finest parodies written in English.a wickedly brilliant skit' Robert Macfarlane, Guardian Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902. Cold Comfort Farm has the sunniness of a P.

As the sukebind flowers, Flora takes each of the family in hand and brings order to their chaos.Cold Comfort Farm is a sharp and clever parody of the melodramatic and rural novel.'Very probably the funniest book ever written' Sunday Times 'Screamingly funny and wildly subversive' Marian Keyes, Guardian'Delicious. When she is orphaned at twenty, she decides her only option is to descend on relatives - the doomed Starkadders at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm.There is Judith in a scarlet shawl, heaving with remorse for an unspoken wickedness raving old Ada Doom, who once saw something nasty in the woodshed lustful Seth and despairing Reuben, Judith's two sons and there is Amos, preaching fire and damnation to one and all.

A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas and one of the best-loved comic novels of all time, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range.'We are not like other folk, maybe, but there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm.'Sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste has been expensively educated to do everything but earn a living.

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