Stella Gibbons wrote some 26 novels altogether, but none were as successful as Cold Comfort Farm. Gibbons has a clear personal style, which can be recognized throughout her novels. Her work is of high quality, arguably higher than many authors during the same period. Cold Comfort Farm stands out among her novels, but not because it is qualitatively some much better. What most readers will remember about the novel is its irony. Cold Comfort Farm is a parody of older literature, and it is hilariously funny. In her subsequent novels, Gibbons could never achieve the same. It probably couldn't be done, the novel was a one-time hit. Even in Conference at Cold Comfort Farm which is a kind of "Cold Comfort Farm Revisited" she could not pull it off. Thus, Cold Comfort Farm remains a lonely peak among Stella Gibbons 26 novels.

However, the same type of irony or sarcasm is found in her other novels, although it works more subtly. Another difference is that there isn't much to ponder about Cold Comfort Farm, whereas her other novels need some digestion, and improve on rumination.

The charmers is one of her later novels. It was published in 1965. It is a gloomy novel, only brightened up by Gibbons irony. It breathes the heavy, gloomy atmosphere of the late 50s to early 60s. The charmers is foremostly a novel about class.

Aged 53, an old spinster, Christine Smith, fired from her office job, takes up a position as a housekeeper in a community of older artists, mostly people of around her same age. She moves in with them to run the household. It doesn't take long to get laid off, and not because she wounldn't do. The whole affair is an eye-opener for Christene. The people she looked up to turn out to be petty, while she now sees the people of old in a different light.

The story is enjoyable and funny because of the strain of irony that runs through all of it, but the story is uneventful, and I had to reread large parts thinking I had missed out on parts. ( )