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  • Published: 31 March 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241418895
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $22.99

Cold Comfort Farm




Stella Gibbons' hilarious comic novel of rural life, new to Penguin Modern Classics

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 organize other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas, Cold Comfort Farm (1932) is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.

  • Published: 31 March 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241418895
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $22.99

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Stella Gibbons

Stella Gibbons is best known for her comic masterpiece Cold Comfort Farm. A witty parody of the pastoral fiction written by authors such as D H Lawrence, Thomas Hardy and Mary Webb, it won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Anglais in 1933 and established her literary reputation. Gibbons also wrote 22 other novels, including Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm (1940) and Starlight (1967), as well as three volumes of short stories and four poetry collections. She died in 1989, aged 87.

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Praise for Cold Comfort Farm

Brilliant . . . very probably the funniest book ever written

Sunday Times