Cold Comfort Farm

Dec 29, 2025 11:58 PM

Author:Stella Gibbons

Cold Comfort Farm

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.

Reviews

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

This is Ireland's most famous living writer tackling one of the most crucial periods in history

—— Guardian

Reading it is like spending time with a favourite uncle whose anecdotes you'd happily listen to over and over again because...it makes you laugh

—— Alice Fisher , The Observer

Having made it to number two in Esquire's funniest books list, Jerome K Jerome's comic tale of boat-bound idlers is reissued this month, with 30 charming illustrations by a certain Vic Reeves

—— Esquire

A lovely jacketed hardback... Reeves captures absolutely Jerome's droll, gentle and thoroughly English sense of the absurd... perfect alfresco spring reading.

—— Claire Allfrey , Metro

Go on a journey without leaving your chair.

—— Harper’s Bazaar

One of the 'classics' of English humorous literature

—— Contemporary Review

A wide-ranging, energetic satire on what used to be called Fleet Street

—— Times Literary Supplement

When high meets lowbrow, comedy ensues, but McAfee's novel is not without serious intent. She deftly peels away her characters' pretensions, forcing readers to examine their own prejudices.

—— Scotsman

Sparky tragicomedy

—— Daily Mail

McAfee is a superlative writer and plotter...McAfee has produced a locus classicus of Fleet Street

—— Rachel Johnson , The Lady

Darkly funny but also a very timely read

—— Stylist

[A] satirical debut about the newspaper business

—— Stand Point

A cutting, hilarious portrait of British print journalism... An entirely human story that brilliantly recreates and analyses the recent past

—— The Times

Those gripped by the escalating News International scandal might enjoy the latest newspaper novel Annalena McAfee's The Spoiler

—— Glasgow Herald

authentic, entertaining and draws on her own experience as an arts journalist

—— Daily Express

The Spoiler - set in the halcyon days before phone hacking - was one of the funniest and sharpest fleet street novels in years.

—— David Robson , Sunday Telegraph Seven

McAfee - herself a former journalist - evokes two distinct eras and styles of journalism, that of fearless frontline reportage and that of its successor: style-oriented, celebrity-obsessed features coverage... This is a pacy read that leaves little doubt in the reader's mind that one school of journalism deserves more mourning than the other

—— Alex Clark , Guardian

Marvellous satire...the novel is cunningly plotted and satisfyingly nuanced

—— Independent on Sunday

If the peek into the world of newspaper journalism afforded by the Leveson inquiry has you gasping for more, then this timely paperback release is perfect...a fiendishly funny (and frighteningly plausible) world of fiddled expenses and suspect tactics

—— Shortlist

Thoroughly enjoyable behind-the-scenes expose of an ambitious celebrity journalist's attempt to nail the scoop of her life

—— Metro

This is the paperback edition. The hardback appeared before the News Corporation bosses were dragged into the Commons. McAfee was either very prescient or close to the action, holding her fictional hacks to account for printing false stories gleaned from disreputable sources

—— Julia Fernandez , Time Out

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