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Showing 1 - 25 of 27 matches in All Departments
Cold Comfort Farm (Unabridged) by Stella Gibbons In Gibbons's classic tale, a resourceful young heroine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Hardy or Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies into the pleasures of normal life. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless, and the proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora's mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Once there she discovers they exist in a state of chaos and feels it is up to her to bring order. Flora's confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics is only half the pleasure of this novel. The other half is Gibbons's wicked sendup of romantic cliches, from the mad woman in the attic to the druidical peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs.
Robert Poste's child is back at Cold Comfort Farm. But all is not
well. Flora finds the farm transformed into a twee haven filled
with Toby jugs and peasant pottery, and rooms labeled 'Quiete
Retreate' and 'Greate laundrie.' It is, Flora winces, 'exactly like
being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time'.
Cherry Hellin'sworth is fulfilling her Community Service stint by working at a Village Hall as the Functions Manager. But she's not terribly good at it. On one evening she manages to to hire out the hall to the Village Drama Society, the Cricket team, a Singing Telegram and a Country and Western group called the'southern Fried Chickens.13 women, 13 men
In The Importance of Being Earnest Jack Worthing discovers every obstacle has been removed from marriage to Gwendolen. Or so he believes. Gwendolen's mother, Lady Bracknell, confesses her own bizarre family history, revealing she is not Gwendolen's mother, she is her father! Paul Doust has produced a perfect simulation of Wilde's characteristically epigrammatic wit in this splendid role for an actress - or actor!1 woman, 1 man
Orphan Flora Poste, heroine of Gibbons's tongue-in-cheek classic novel, likes everything to be tidy and comfortable so when she goes to live with her eccentric relatives at Cold Comfort Farm she tries to alter her surroundings and encourage other to greater things. But this proves difficult...6 women, 9 men
One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World' A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women Selection A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas and one of the best-loved comic novels of all time, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. 'We are not like other folk, maybe, but there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm...' Sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste has been expensively educated to do everything but earn a living. When she is orphaned at twenty, she decides her only option is to descend on relatives - the doomed Starkadders at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm. There is Judith in a scarlet shawl, heaving with remorse for an unspoken wickedness; raving old Ada Doom, who once saw something nasty in the woodshed; lustful Seth and despairing Reuben, Judith's two sons; and there is Amos, preaching fire and damnation to one and all. As the sukebind flowers, Flora takes each of the family in hand and brings order to their chaos. Cold Comfort Farm is a sharp and clever parody of the melodramatic and rural novel. 'Very probably the funniest book ever written' Sunday Times 'Screamingly funny and wildly subversive' Marian Keyes, Guardian 'Delicious ... Cold Comfort Farm has the sunniness of a P. G. Wodehouse and the comic aplomb of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop' Independent 'One of the finest parodies written in English...a wickedly brilliant skit' Robert Macfarlane, Guardian Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902. She went to 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 Heureuse Prize. Amongst her other novels are Miss Linsey and Pa (1936), Nightingale Wood (1938), Westwood (1946), Conference at Cold Comfort Farm (1949) and Beside the Pearly Water (1954). Stella Gibbons died in 1989.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 'Brilliant ... very probably the funniest book ever written' Sunday Times When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly-named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last twenty years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and ruthless parody of rural melodramas and purple prose, Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time. 'Screamingly funny and wildly subversive' Marian Keyes, Guardian The Penguin Classics edition of Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm is introduced by Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. If you enjoyed Cold Comfort Farm you might like George and Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody, also available in Penguin Classics.
Cold Comfort Farm (Unabridged) by Stella Gibbons In Gibbons's classic tale, a resourceful young heroine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Hardy or Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies into the pleasures of normal life. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless, and the proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora's mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Once there she discovers they exist in a state of chaos and feels it is up to her to bring order. Flora's confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics is only half the pleasure of this novel. The other half is Gibbons's wicked sendup of romantic cliches, from the mad woman in the attic to the druidical peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs.
When Nell Sely moves from sleepy Dorset to Hampstead she leaves
behind a childhood of dull teas and oppressive rules for the
freedom of the big city. Naive and only nineteen, she becomes
embroiled with the wayward John Gaunt and falls in with London's
bohemian crowd. In this city of seductive, shifting morals,
smoke-filled jazz-clubs and glamorous espresso bars, Nell must
master her new found independence and learn to strike her own
course.
Life is not quite a fairytale for poor Viola. Left penniless, the young widow is forced to live with her late husband's family in a joyless old house. There's Mr Wither, a tyrannical old miser, Mrs Wither, who thinks Viola is just a common shop girl, and two unlovely sisters-in-law, one of whom is in love with the chauffeur. Only the prospect of the charity ball can raise Viola's spirits - especially as Victor Spring, the local prince charming, will be there. But Victor's intentions towards our Cinderella are, in short, not quite honourable ...
'Don't show proper feelin', does it, not turnin' up for 'is dad's funeral?' Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis have lost both their parents in the last six months. Attending the funeral for their estranged father, they wonder what will become of them now that the last connection to their difficult childhood has been severed. What have they inherited - financially and emotionally - to guide them to adulthood, and build a new home together? Enbury Heath is a semi-autobiographical account of the years which Gibbons and her brothers spent living in a cottage in Hampstead Heath: a wonderfully astute, bittersweet novel about family, grief, money, and the pleasures of London.
Brother and sister, Constance and Kenneth Fielding live in calm respectability, just out of reach of London and the Blitz. But when a series of uninvited guests converge upon them - from a Balkan exile to Ken's old flame and the siblings' own raffish father - the household struggles to preserve its precious peace. In this full house, in a quiet corner of suburbia, no one expects to find romance.
Uprooted from war-torn London, Alda Lucie-Brown and her three daughters start a new life at Pine Cottage in rural Sussex. Unsuited to a quiet life, Alda attempts to orchestrate -- with varying degrees of success -- the love affairs of her neighbours. Her unwilling subjects include an Italian POW, a Communist field-hand, a battery-chicken farmer and her intelligent friend Jean.
What better place to spend the holidays than Cold Comfort Farm? Available for the first time since its original publication more than fifty years ago, "Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm" is a charming collection whose hilarious title story features Christmas dinner with the Starkadders before Flora's arrival. With Adam playing Santa while draped in Mrs. Starkadders's shawls, the family shares their traditional "Christmas pudding"-a m?lange containing random objects of doom foretelling the coming year: a coffin nail for death, a bad sixpence for financial ruin, and a menthol cone to indicate that the lucky recipient will go "blind wi' headache." These lively tales will delight anyone who loves Stella Gibbons and her signature wit.
Indulge in a feel-good collection of stories from the author of Cold Comfort Farm. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste. It is a parody of the worst sort of family Christmas: Adam Lambsbreath dresses up as Father Christmas in two of Judith's red shawls. There are unsuitable presents, unpleasant insertions into the pudding and Aunt Ada Doom orders Amos to carve the turkey, adding: 'Ay, would it were a vulture, 'twere more fitting!' 'Stella Gibbons is the Jane Austen of the 20th century' Lynne Truss, author of the Constable Twitten series.
Sixteen years after she last set foot in the picturesque village of Howling, Flora Poste--the disobedient yet charming protagonist of "Cold Comfort Farm"--returns to the fray to help her relatives, the troubled Starkadders, who own Cold Comfort Farm. Their farm has been restored as a museum, decorated in false English country style, and has become the venue for a conference of the International Thinkers Group, which includes ineffable painters, insufferable sculptors, eccentric Eastern sages, and a whole plethora of intellectuals whose greatest obsession is annoying and shocking the locals. A satire on the stiff and pretentious English art establishment, this sequel lives up to the audacious and intelligent humor of its predecessor. "Dieciseis anos despues de la ultima vez que estuvo en el pintoresco pueblo de Howling, Flora Poste--la discola y encantadora protagonista de "La hija de Robert Poste"--vuelve a la carga para socorrer a sus familiares, los atribulados Starkadder, propietarios de la granja de Cold Comfort. La finca ha sido rehabilitada como un museo, decorado en falso estilo rustico ingles, y se ha convertido en el lugar de reunion de una conferencia del Grupo de Expertos Internacionales, entre los que se cuentan pintores inefables, escultores insufribles, sabios orientales excentricos y toda una pletora de intelectuales fastidiosos cuya maxima obsesion es dejar pasmados a los lugarenos. Una satira sobre el frio y presuntuoso establecimiento artistico ingles, esta secuela esta a la altura del humor inteligente y descarado de su antecesora."
In this classic tale, Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless. The proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora's mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Flora's confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics--from the mad woman in the attic to the peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs--provides a satirical look at a dark, rural scene. "En este cuento clasico, Flora Poste, huerfana a los 19 anos, decide vivir con familiares en Cold Comfort Farm en Sussex, donde las vacas se llaman Casquivana, Desnortada, Ociosa y Desgarbada. Los propietarios, la familia adusta Starkadder, son tiranizados por la misteriosa tia de Flora, que controla la casa desde una habitacion cerrada con llave. Las gestiones seguras e inteligentes de Flora de un elenco alarmante de excentricos--desde la loca en el desvan hasta los campesinos con sus acentos de West Country y hierbas misticas--proporcionan una mirada satirica a una escena rural oscura."
A sly and satirical fairytale by the author of "Cold Comfort Farm"
Wilfred Davis, quiet, retired, respectable widower, is sitting and sobbing on a park bench. He has lost his daughter and any sense of purpose. A mysterious stranger passes him a handkerchief, and strikes up a conversation that leads to friendship and an unconventional new home for Wilfred. Mary Davis wants only four things out of life: a husband and three children, so at seventeen she runs away from school, her father and her home and moves to London to find them. Only a few months later Mary is engaged, but love and marriage promise to be very different from her childhood daydreams. For Mary and Wilfred, it seems Fate has taken a hand, or is there another kind of guiding spirit at play? Stella Gibbons' final novel, written in the 1970s but only discovered many years after her death, is published here for the first time.
Creepy. Peculiar. Fairy. Goblin. Liar. Weirdo. Crank. Genius. No one knows what to make of Juliet Slater, not even her mother. And clothes, boys, school, friends, the changing seasons and what other people think - none of these things seem to matter to Juliet. She spends hours in her room with incomprehensible mathematical text books, her mind voyaging in strange seas of thought, alone. Is she a genius? It might take the rest of her life to find out. While Stella Gibbons was celebrated for her beloved bestseller Cold Comfort Farm, the manuscript for Pure Juliet lay unseen and forgotten until it was brought to light by her family in 2014, and is published here for the first time in Vintage Classics. A tale that travels from an eco-millionaire's British country idyll to an Arabian Nights-style fantasy of the Middle East, this is a treat for fans of this witty, curious and always surprising author. |
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