A classic of its kind, a dazzling parody of the earthy, melodramatic novels of the period.
Flora Poste has been expensively educated to do everything but earn her own living. When she is orphaned at twenty, she decides her only option is to go and live with her relatives the Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm.
What relatives, though: Judith, alone in her grief; raving old Ada Doom, who once saw something nasty in the woodshed; Amos, called by God; Seth, smouldering with sex; and Elfine, whojust needs a little polish. Flora feels it incumbent upon her to bring order into the chaos. And she turns out to be remarkably good at it.
Stella Gibbons was born in 1902. She studied journalism at University College, London, and then worked for ten years on various papers, including The Evening Standard. COLD COMFORT FARM, her first novel, was published in 1932, and was followed by other novels, short stories, and poems. She died in 1989.