Influences
Stella Gibbons admired Jane Austen and Keats. Both writers are directly quoted in her first two books. Austen features as the epigraph to Cold Comfort Farm and Bassett, and Keats is quoted in Bassett: "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections."
Three of Gibbons’ novels rework fairy tales. Nightingale Wood (1938) adapts Cinderella, My American (1939) adapts The Snow Queen, and White Sand and Grey Sand (1958) takes on Beauty and the Beast.
Ouida was another influence on the writing of Gibbons. One critic thought Ticky (1943) was a parody of Ouida as Cold Comfort Farm had been a parody of Mary Webb, but she denied this.
Read more about this topic: Stella Gibbons
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“The tourist who moves about to see and hear and open himself to all the influences of the places which condense centuries of human greatness is only a man in search of excellence.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)