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:
“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)
“Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education, feel a politely disguised contempt for it; and thus the study of one of the most pervasive and powerful influences on human life is traduced and neglected.”
—Yvor Winters (1900–1968)
“Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.”
—Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)