Cold Comfort Farm (Penguin Classics)

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Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Reuben, who's extremely suspicious of and hostile towards Flora until he's persuaded that she's not interested in taking over the running of the farm - whereupon he becomes friendly and helpful. He even proposes marriage to her but is fine with her turning him down, since he's not really in love with her, just fond of her. Needless to say, Flora rolls up her sleeves and gets to work, finding each of the main characters a more suitable outlet for their energies and obsessions, while fending off the libidinous Hampstead intellectual Mybug (quite possibly modelled on DH Lawrence) who has designs upon her virtue.

The Penguin Classics edition of Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm is introduced by Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. All the rumours are true. This is probably one of if not the funniest, feel good and witty books written! I’ll admit I was sceptical, it sounded absurd. And it is!!! Ridiculously absurd, odd, quirky and just down right nutty. But…it is just so entertaining and enjoyable. All ridiculousness aside, it is actually very cleverly crafted and well written with sharp and catchy prose and a clan (quite literally) of memorable and unique characters (including the cows!) Judith: Cur. Coward! Liar! Libertine! Who were you with last night? Moll at the mill or Violet at the vicarage? Or Ivy, perhaps, at the ironmongery? Seth—my son... do you want to break my heart?

The earliest instance of the phrase that I have found is from A London Newsletter, by ‘the Old Stager’, published in The Sphere (London) on Saturday 20 th January 1934: Amos's half-cousins: Mica, married to Susan; Urk, who expects to marry Elfine and is devoted to water-voles; Ezra, married to Jane; Caraway, married to Lettie; Harkaway Adam Lambsbreath: an old old farmhand who among other things washed dishes with a twig. You can imagine how clean the dishes were at the farm. If you enjoyed Cold Comfort Farm you might like George and Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody, also available in Penguin Classics. In Cold Comfort Farm, Flora Poste is orphaned as a 20-year-old woman. When her friend suggests that she get a job, she replies that she would rather bum off her unknown relations. Then, when Flora writes to her relatives, she has certain expectations about her accommodations—she wants her own room and someone to meet her at the train.

Flora begins to worry about Elfine, who is apparently in love with Richard Hawk-Monitor, the scion of country gentry who live nearby. There is soon to be a ball in honor of Richard’s twenty-first birthday, and Flora arranges an invitation for Elfine, with herself as chaperon. The Starkadders expect Elfine to marry Urk, a farm cousin. Flora secretly grooms the girl and gives her private instruction in good taste and deportment. Elfine makes a grand entrance at the ball. Before the night is over, Richard announces their engagement. If you ask me,' continued Flora, 'I think I have much in common with Miss Austen. She liked everything to be tidy and pleasant and comforta

Amos Starkadder: Judith's husband and hellfire preacher at the Church of the Quivering Brethren ("Ye're all damned!") Urk in the book doesn't even try to hide how eager he is for Elfine to come to age so he can ravish her, since he's been fixated on making her his bride since the night she was born. Thankfully, Flora steps in and arranges Elfine to be married to a boy closer to her age, and Urk (after some brief wailing) settles on Mariam the hired girl, who is just as eager to have him as he is to have her. Flora glimpses her seventeen-year-old cousin, Elfine, who never attended school and spends most of her time wandering about the moors writing poetry. Flora hears Meriam, the hired girl, groaning while delivering her fourth illegitimate child by Seth. Conferring with Cousin Judith, Flora learns that Judith’s husband, Amos, did a great, secret wrong to Flora’s deceased father. Coarse and filled with lust for the land, Reuben is the only true farmer among the Starkadders. He suspects that Flora wants to take over the farm, but when she assures him that the farm is the last thing she wants, she wins him over. Seth makes suggestive advances to her, but Flora discovers that his great love in life is not women, as she has assumed, but “the talkies.” Though exhausted by her interaction with these family members, Flora decides she must become acquainted with the other Starkadders. The author, Stella Gibbons, had grown up among weird relations. When she was just eleven she had to talk her father out of committing suicide, and was astonished to realize that he was actually relishing their melodramatic conversation. Her family seemed partial to creating scenes, but with a clear thread of pretence running through their ‘performances’.