The Charmers

Description

'Gibbons was an acute and witty observer, and her dissection of the British class system is spot-on' - Mail on Sunday Thrown out of her long-established office job, Miss Christine Smith takes up a new role as housekeeper for a group of middle-aged artists. Charmed by a previous mystical experience, her spirituality is nurtured further by the tenants, who seem stuck in their own personal lull. Written in the 1960s, surrounded by social and political transitions, the novel focuses on change, or the lack thereof.

Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902. She went to the North London Collegiate School and studied journalism at University College, London. She then worked for ten years on various papers, including the Evening Standard. Stella Gibbons is the author of twenty-five novels, three volumes of short stories, and four volumes of poetry. Her first publication was a book of poems, The Mountain Beast (1930) and her first novel Cold Comfort Farm (1932) won the Femina Vie Heuruse Prize for 1933. Among her works are Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm (1940) Westwood (1946), Conference at Cold Comfort Farm (1959) and Starlight (1967). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. In 1933 she married the actor and singer Allan Webb. They had one daughter. Stella Gibbons died in 1989.

Gibbons was an acute and witty observer, and her dissection of the British class system is spot-on * Mail on Sunday * Stella Gibbons is the Jane Austen of the 20th century -- Lynn Truss