Published: 8 January, 2014
by DAN CARRIER

SHE once wrote anonymous features for the Evening Standard, and later in life worried that readers only ever read one of her 33 novels.

But Stella Gibbons – author of Cold Comfort Farm – is finally getting a measure of recognition.

The Heath and Hampstead Society have asked council planners for permission to attach a plaque to her former home in the Vale of Health.

Gibbons, who died in 1989, was born in Malden Crescent, Kentish Town, and lived in various Camden addresses including Willow Road, Hampstead, The Vale of Health and Oakeshott Avenue on the Holly Lodge Estate, Highgate. 

In 1926, Stella and her two brothers Lewis and Gerald moved to Vale Cottage, just yards away from where DH Lawrence once lived. It is this house the Heath and Hampstead Society have earmarked for a plaque – and their bid has been backed by Gibbons enthusiast, Guardian journalist Rachel Cooke.

Ms Cooke, who has championed Gibbons’ other titles, told the New Journal that the writer was a pioneer whose legacy deserved to be celebrated. 

She said: “There are not many writers who can say a phrase we use was their invention – but whenever it is said that there is ‘something nasty in the woodshed’, you are quoting Cold Comfort Farm. For that alone she deserves a plaque.”

When Cold Comfort was published in 1932, Gibbons had been previously worked as a secretary for the Evening Standard’s editor. But her brilliance had been spotted and she had been promoted to write features – albeit without a byline. 

Cold Comfort was written in spare moments at the offices of The Lady magazine in Covent Garden, where she was working. The book scooped the Prix Etranger of the Prix-Femina-Vie Heureuse literary prize, won also by Virginia Woolf for her novel, To The Lighthouse.

Ms Cooke added: “To win it was an achievement – but to win it for a comic novel was exceptional. Stella had many fans – Ken Tynan, Barry Humphries, Noel Coward – and a lot of people will say Cold Comfort Farm was their favourite ‘comfort’ read.”

Ms Cooke said Cold Comfort was just one of Stella’s many achievements. 

She said: “The brilliance is in the writing – it does not adapt easily but she also did other amazing things in her worklife at the time when women did not enjoy careers like her own. She was a very successful journalist and she wrote 30 other books. None may have reached the dizzying heights of Cold Comfort but they were very good novels and did very well indeed. It is said women do not write great comic novels – just give them Cold Comfort Farm and that is the argument over.”

The Society’s plaques committee chairman Frank Harding said they hoped the application would be a success. 

He said: “The people we  propose have to have been dead for 20 years and made a significant contribution to either life in Hampstead or British society.”

The Society’s plaques scheme has seen around 35 plaques put up, including ones marking the Parliament Hill home of George Orwell, the Church Row house of writer Daphne du Maurier, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in  Maresfield Gardens and artist John Constable in Lower Terrace.