Funny books to read and buy for Christmas gifts

Funny books of 2024

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7 extremely funny books written by women

Penguin Classics

Cold Comfort Farm

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One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 
 
'Brilliant ... very probably the funniest book ever written' Sunday Times 
 
When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly-named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last twenty years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and ruthless parody of rural melodramas and purple prose, Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time. 
 
'Screamingly funny and wildly subversive' Marian Keyes, Guardian 
 
The Penguin Classics edition of Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm is introduced by Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. 
 
If you enjoyed Cold Comfort Farm you might like George and Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody, also available in Penguin Classics.

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 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. Stella Gibbons died in 1989.

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature, Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last twenty years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organize other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas, Cold Comfort Farm (1932) is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation	

Patricia Gallimore and Miriam Margolyes star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the classic comic novel.

Patricia Gallimore and Miriam Margolyes star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the classic comic novel. Strong of will and slender of ankle, 20-year-old orphan Flora Poste is blessed with every virtue save that of being able to earn her own living. Casting around for suitable relatives with whom she can make her home, Flora alights on the mysterious Starkadders and, ignoring the horrified shrieks of her friends, heads down to darkest Sussex. 
 
There she is confronted by an exceptionally odd cast of characters: grief-stricken Judith, fervently religious Amos, the lusty smouldering Seth, wild and mysterious Elfine and, of course, the invisible tyrant Great Aunt Ada Doom who saw something nasty in the woodshed. Many would be overcome by the simmering passions of the Starkadder family, but not Flora. All they need is a little organising. 
 
Stella Gibbons' deliciously witty parody has been delighting readers since 1932 and retains its original sunny charm in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation.

Stella Gibbons is best known for her comic masterpiece Cold Comfort Farm. A witty parody of the pastoral fiction written by authors such as D H Lawrence, Thomas Hardy and Mary Webb, it won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Anglais in 1933 and established her literary reputation. Gibbons also wrote 22 other novels, including Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm (1940) and Starlight (1967), as well as three volumes of short stories and four poetry collections. She died in 1989, aged 87.

The Yellow Houses

The second of two forgotten novels by Stella Gibbons, discovered in 2014 and published now for the first time

Fans of the acclaimed British author, described as the “Jane Austen of the 20th century” will be delighted that the existence of two never-before-published novels have been revealed by her daughter

Gibbons was an acute and witty observer, and her dissection of the British class system is spot-on

Gibbons portrays her heroine with such sensitivity that this young woman and her story prove impossible to resist

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.

Wilfred Davis, quiet, retired, respectable widower, is sitting and sobbing on a park bench. He has lost his daughter and any sense of purpose. A mysterious stranger passes him a handkerchief, and strikes up a conversation that leads to friendship and an unconventional new home for Wilfred. 
 
Mary Davis wants only four things out of life: a husband and three children, so at seventeen she runs away from school, her father and her home and moves to London to find them. Only a few months later Mary is engaged, but love and marriage promise to be very different from her childhood daydreams. 
 
For Mary and Wilfred, it seems Fate has taken a hand, or is there another kind of guiding spirit at play? 
 
Stella Gibbons' final novel, written in the 1970s but only discovered many years after her death, is published here for the first time.

Pure Juliet

Never before published, the lost novel by the bestselling author of Cold Comfort Farm

Fans of the acclaimed British author, described as the “Jane Austen of the 20th century” will be delighted that the existence of two never-before-published novels have been revealed by her daughter.

Gibbons portrays her heroine with such sensitivity that this young woman and her story prove impossible to resist.

Stella Gibbons is the Jane Austen of the 20th century

Creepy. Peculiar. Fairy. Goblin. Liar. Weirdo. Crank. Genius. 
 
No one knows what to make of Juliet Slater, not even her mother. And clothes, boys, school, friends, the changing seasons and what other people think - none of these things seem to matter to Juliet. She spends hours in her room with incomprehensible mathematical text books, her mind voyaging in strange seas of thought, alone. Is she a genius? It might take the rest of her life to find out. 
 
While Stella Gibbons was celebrated for her beloved bestseller Cold Comfort Farm, the manuscript for Pure Juliet lay unseen and forgotten until it was brought to light by her family in 2014, and is published here for the first time in Vintage Classics. A tale that travels from an eco-millionaire's British country idyll to an Arabian Nights-style fantasy of the Middle East, this is a treat for fans of this witty, curious and always surprising author.

My American

'Stella Gibbons's gift is very special' - Daily Express

Chipper is the word: Gibbons's heroines are plucky, determined and quietly hedonistic. But she can do melancholy with the best of them, too, not to mention melodrama

Stella Gibbons…an exception to that old canard: women can't make us laugh

** AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME ** 
 
'Stella Gibbons's gift is very special' Daily Express 
 
Amy, a neglected motherless child in 1920s London meets Robert, a wealthy American boy. It's an encounter she will never forget. 
 
My American follows the lives and loves of Amy Lee and Robert Vorst: from a chance childhood meeting to the comic, tragic and romantic trysts that follow. Amy, a baker's daughter, has dreams of becoming a writer, whilst Robert is destined to be a doctor. Later, embarking on a lecture tour in Depression-era America, she is reminded of her childhood friend and endeavours to find him. 
 
My American is an unashamedly romantic novel by Stella Gibbons, author of the beloved satire Cold Comfort Farm.

Here Be Dragons

'The atmosphere of the cheap cafés...is subtly caught. Packed tight with wit and understanding, it lights the London Scene' - Scotsman

The atmosphere of the cheap cafés...is subtly caught. Packed tight with wit and understanding, it lights the London Scene

When Nell Sely moves from sleepy Dorset to Hampstead she leaves behind a childhood of dull teas and oppressive rules for the freedom of the big city. Naive and only nineteen, she becomes embroiled with the wayward John Gaunt and  falls in with London's bohemian crowd. In this city of seductive, shifting morals, smoke-filled jazz-clubs and glamorous espresso bars, Nell must master her new found independence and learn to strike her own course.

Stella Gibbons

'Don't show proper feelin', does it, not turnin' up for 'is dad's funeral?' 
 
Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis have lost both their parents in the last six months. Attending the funeral for their estranged father, they wonder what will become of them now that the last connection to their difficult childhood has been severed. What have they inherited - financially and emotionally - to guide them to adulthood, and build a new home together? 
 
 Enbury Heath is a semi-autobiographical account of the years which Gibbons and her brothers spent living in a cottage in Hampstead Heath: a wonderfully astute, bittersweet novel about family, grief, money, and the pleasures of London.

Stella Gibbons

Enbury Heath

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