Book description
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LYNNE TRUSS
'Stella Gibbons is the Jane Austen of the twentieth century' The Times
Set in wartime London, Westwood tells the story of Margaret
Steggles, a plain bookish girl whose mother has told her that she is
not the type that attracts men. Her schoolfriend Hilda has a sunny
temperament and keeps her service boys 'ever so cheery'. When Margaret
finds a ration book on Hampstead Heath the pompous writer Gerard
Challis enters both their lives. Margaret slavishly adores Challis and
his artistic circle; Challis idolises Hilda for her hair and her eyes
and Hilda finds Gerard's romantic overtures a bit of a bind. This is a
delightfully comic and wistful tale of love and longing.
Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902. She went to the North
London Collegiate School and studied journalism at University College,
London. She then worked for ten years on various papers, including the
Evening Standard
. Stella Gibbons is the author of twenty-five novels, three volumes of
short-stories, and four volumes of poetry. Her first publication was a
book of poems
The Mountain Beast
(1930) and her first novel
Cold Comfort Farm
(1932) won the Femina Vie Heuruse Prize for 1933. Amongst her works are
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm
(1940)
Westwood
(1946),
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm
(1959) and
Starlight
(1967). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in
1950. In 1933 she married the actor and singer Allan Webb. They had one
daughter. Stella Gibbons died in 1989.
