
The inhabitants of the farm – Aunt Ada Doom, the Starkadders, and their extended family and workers – feel obliged to take her in to atone for an unspecified wrong once done to her father.Īs is typical in a certain genre of romantic 19th-century and early 20th-century literature, each of the farm's inhabitants has some long-festering emotional problem caused by ignorance, hatred, or fear, and the farm is badly run. She decides to take advantage of the fact that "no limits are set, either by society or one's own conscience, to the amount one may impose on one's relatives", and settles on visiting her distant relatives at the isolated Cold Comfort Farm in the fictional village of Howling in Sussex. It parodies the romanticised, sometimes doom-laden accounts of rural life popular at the time, by writers such as Mary Webb.įollowing the death of her parents, the book's heroine, Flora Poste, finds she is possessed "of every art and grace save that of earning her own living". Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand.0-14-144159-3 (current Penguin Classics edition)Ĭold Comfort Farm is a comic novel by English author Stella Gibbons, published in 1932. But Flora loves nothing better than to organize other people.
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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.

Language eng Summary When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. Label Cold Comfort Farm Title Cold Comfort Farm Statement of responsibility Stella Gibbons with an introduction by Lynne Truss Creator
