Staff Pick
If I were to tell you that Cold Comfort Farm is a perfectly executed take-down (and take-off) of romantic pastoral novels, it wouldn't be inaccurate... but it would miss the point of this book's charm. Stella Gibbons has done an awfully artful job of writing rustic mayhem. Every page of this book has a line of dialogue or a turn of phrase that is both striking and funny. (The plot in a nutshell: Flora Post, a refined, metropolitan young woman goes to the country to redeem and uplift the lives of her well-nigh primordial relatives.) Highly recommended! Recommended By Bart K., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
? Quite simply one of the funniest satirical novels of the last century.??Nancy Pearl, NPR?s Morning Edition
THE DELIRIOUSLY ENTERTAINING Cold Comfort Farm is ?very probably the funniest book ever written? (The Sunday Times, London)?a hilarious parody of D. H. Lawrence?s and Thomas Hardy?s earthy, melodramatic novels. When the recently orphaned socialite Flora Poste descends on her relatives at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm in deepest Sussex, she finds a singularly miserable group in dire need of her particular talent? organization.
Review
Quite simply one of the funniest satirical novels of the last century.
Nancy Pearl, NPRs Morning Edition
Delicious . . . Cold Comfort Farm has the sunniness of a P. G. Wodehouse and the comic aplomb of Evelyn Waughs Scoop.
The Independent (London)
Synopsis
A hilarious parody of D. H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardys earthy, melodramatic novels, the deliriously entertaining Cold Comfort Farm is very probably the funniest book ever written (The Sunday Times).
Synopsis
-Quite simply one of the funniest satirical novels of the last century.- --Nancy Pearl, NPR's Morning Edition
The deliriously entertaining Cold Comfort Farm is -very probably the funniest book ever written- (The Sunday Times, London), a hilarious parody of D. H. Lawrence's and Thomas Hardy's earthy, melodramatic novels. When the recently orphaned socialite Flora Poste descends on her relatives at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm in deepest Sussex, she finds a singularly miserable group in dire need of her particular talent: organization.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Synopsis
Stella Gibbons' novel is a wickedly funny portrait of British rural life in the 1930s. Flora, a recently orphaned socialite, moves in with her country relatives, the gloomy Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm.
- A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with French flaps, rough front, and luxurious packaging
- Features an introduction from Lynne Truss and cover illustrations by Roz Chast
About the Author
Stella Dorothea Gibbons, novelist, poet and short-story writer, 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.
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 other novels are Miss Linsey and Pa (1936), Nightingale Wood (1938), Westwood (1946), Conference at Cold Comfort Farm (1959) and Beside the Pearly Water (1954). Her Collected Poems appeared in 1950.
In 1933 she married the actor and singer Allan Webb, who died in 1959. They had one daughter. Stella Gibbons died in 1989.
Lynne Truss is a writer and journalist who started out as a literary editor with a blue pencil and then got sidetracked. The author of three novels and numerous radio comedy dramas, she spent six years as the television critic of The Times of London, followed by four (rather peculiar) years as a sports columnist for the same newspaper. She won Columnist of the Year for her work for Women’s Journal. Lynne Truss also hosted Cutting a Dash, a popular BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation. She now reviews books for the Sunday Times of London and is a familiar voice on BBC Radio 4. She lives in Brighton, England.
Roz Chast is a regular cartoonist for the New Yorker, and her work has also appeared in Redbook, Scientific American, Fast Company, and the Harvard Business Review.