Stella Dorothea Gibbons (1902-1989) was born in London. She studied journalism at University College, London and worked for ten years on various papers, including the Evening Standard. She married the actor and singer Allan Webb. They had one daughter. Gibbons is the author of twenty-five novels, three volumes of short stories, and four volumes of poetry. Her first novel Cold Comfort Farm (1932) was an immediate success and won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1933. Among her works are Nightingale Wood (1938), The Bachelor (1944), Westwood (1946) and Starlight (1967). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1950.