Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons

WE HAVE CHANGED BOOKS BECAUSE THE ORIGINAL SELECTION IS OUT OF PRINT, AND APPEARS TO BE A RESEARCH REFERENCE BOOK.

Cold Comfort Farm is a comic novel by English author Stella Gibbons, published in 1932. It parodies the romanticised, sometimes doom-laden accounts of rural life popular at the time, by writers such as Mary Webb. The novel was awarded the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize in 1933.

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to to descend on relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm she meets the doomed Starkadders, an eccentric group of relatives suffering from a wide array of ailments.

But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people. Armed with common sense and a string will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas. Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic books of all time.

suggested by Geraldine
Published 1932