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BOOKS | HUMOR
A Dash of Fun for Fun-Loving Readers
‘Cold Comfort Farm’, by Stella Gibbons
Like all really strong-minded women, on whom everybody flops, she adored being bossed about. It was so restful.
Stella Gibbons, ‘Cold Comfort Farm’
Cold Comfort Farm is a comic novel by English author Stella Gibbons, published in 1932. The novel was awarded the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize in 1932. It is a spoof, a parody of the over romanticised and doom-filled accounts of rural life by some writers of the times.
“Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?”
I haven’t ever read a book that I would want to quote so extensively, as ‘Cold Comfort Farm.’ It is also a book that I felt impelled and compelled to read through, the second time: not just parts of it, but the whole. In 2025, I read it again.
Firstly, it is amusing.
Secondly, it is hilarious.
Thirdly, it is ‘flueful of wit.’
If one were to combine Oscar Wilde, Richmal Crompton, Richard Amour, Robert Buckman and Bill Bryson in more or less equal parts, you might get Stella Gibbons in ‘Cold Comfort Farm.’ Which is probably an exaggeration, but fresh from a third read of the book, this is what I feel.
