Stella Dorothea Gibbons was een Engelse romanschrijver, journaliste, dichteres en korte-verhalenschrijfster. Haar eerste roman, Cold Comfort Farm, won in 1933 de Femina Vie Heureuse prijs. Dit werk is een satire en parodie op het pessimistische plattelandsrealisme van Thomas Hardy en zijn volgelingen. Gibbons introduceert een zelfverzekerde, moderne, pragmatische en optimistische jonge vrouw in de grimmige, door het lot bepaalde en duistere landelijke scènes die deze romanologen vaak afbeeldden.
Set on the eve of World War II in a resort on the east coast of England, The Rich House follows the love affairs of six young people and their intertwined adorations. These three tip the balance, and relationships shift, but even war cannot halt the passions of the young.
Wilfred Davis, quiet, retired, respectable widower, is sitting and sobbing on a park bench. He has lost his daughter and any sense of purpose. A mysterious stranger passes him a handkerchief, and strikes up a conversation that leads to friendship and an unconventional new home for Wilfred. Mary Davis wants only four things out of life: a husband and three children, so at seventeen she runs away from school, her father and her home and moves to London to find them. Only a few months later Mary is engaged, but love and marriage promise to be very different from her childhood daydreams. For Mary and Wilfred, it seems Fate has taken a hand, or is there another kind of guiding spirit at play? Stella Gibbons' final novel, written in the 1970s but only discovered many years after her death, is published here for the first time.
In the night the snow came. She awoke on Christmas morning in that unmistakable light, coming up from the earth and shining between her curtains. Celebrate Christmas through the creative minds of a host of authors, including Beryl Bainbridge, Maeve Binchy, Richmal Crompton, Alice Munro and Elizabeth von Arnim. From the delightful consequences of decorating the tree by Stella Gibbons to a disorientating encounter at 35,000 feet on a Christmas Day flight by Muriel Spark, an amateur pantomime by Stella Margetson and a New Year's resolution by Alice Childress, these stories are sure to fortify you over the Christmas period. Stories for Christmas and the Festive Season explores the joys and disappointments, pressures and preparations of this time of year from a female perspective. In keeping with the spirit of the series, the stories are plucked from different decades of the twentieth century and penned by familiar as well as forgotten authors writing for both books and popular magazines. The British Library Women Writers series is a curated collection of novels by female authors who enjoyed broad, popular appeal in their day. In a century during which the role of women in society changed radically, their fictional heroines highlight women's experience of life inside and outside the home through the decades in these rich, insightful and evocative stories.
Cold Comfort Farm (Unabridged) by Stella Gibbons In Gibbons's classic tale, a resourceful young heroine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Hardy or Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies into the pleasures of normal life. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless, and the proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora's mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Once there she discovers they exist in a state of chaos and feels it is up to her to bring order. Flora's confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics is only half the pleasure of this novel. The other half is Gibbons's wicked sendup of romantic cliches, from the mad woman in the attic to the druidical peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs.
Set in the mid-20th century, this novel explores themes of societal expectations and personal identity through its richly drawn characters. With a blend of humor and poignancy, the story delves into the complexities of relationships and the pursuit of happiness. The author, known for their sharp wit, crafts a narrative that reflects the nuances of human experience, making it a timeless read that resonates with both contemporary and historical audiences.
Exploring themes of freedom and solitude, the protagonist discovers a newfound sense of living that fulfills her deepest desires. Surrounded by nature and accompanied by an animal companion, she experiences a transformative journey that feels both intoxicating and liberating. This narrative delves into the profound impact of embracing one's true self and the joy found in simplicity.
'Don't show proper feelin', does it, not turnin' up for 'is dad's funeral'Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis have lost both their parents in the last six months. Attending the funeral for their estranged father, they wonder what will become of them now that the last connection to their difficult childhood has been severed. What have they inherited - financially and emotionally - to guide them to adulthood, and build a new home together Enbury Heath is a semi-autobiographical account of the years which Gibbons and her brothers spent living in a cottage in Hampstead a wonderfully astute, bittersweet novel about family, grief, money, and the pleasures of London.
The Club in central London holds the quarters of Queen Victoria's finest regiment: the First Bloods. Amidst the rows and rumbles - and remarkable punishments - is a mocking and piquant observation of factious all-male societies.
Winner of the 1933 Femina Vie Heureuse Prize, COLD COMFORT FARM is a wickedly funny portrait of British rural life in the 1930's. Flora Poste, a recently orphaned socialite, moves in with her country relatives, the gloomy Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, and becomes enmeshed in a web of violent emotions, despair, and scheming, until Flora manages to set things right. A BBC Radio Presents dramatization featuring stirring music and sound effects.
Brother and sister, Constance and Kenneth Fielding live in calm respectability, just out of reach of London and the Blitz. But when a series of uninvited guests converge upon them - from a Balkan exile to Ken's old flame and the siblings' own raffish father - the household struggles to preserve... číst celé