Stella Gibbons (1902–1989) was an English author, journalist, and poet. She established her reputation with her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm (1932), which won the Prix Femina Étranger award. After an indifferent school career Gibbons trained as a journalist, and worked as a reporter and features writer. Her first book (1930) was a collection of poems, and throughout her life she considered herself primarily a poet rather than a novelist. After Cold Comfort Farm, a satire on the genre of rural-themed novels popular in the late 1920s, most of Gibbons's novels were based in the middle-class suburban world with which she was familiar. Critics have compared her style to Jane Austen's. Although she was active as a writer for half a century, none of her later 22 novels or other literary works achieved the same popular success, nor have they been accepted into the canon of English literature, perhaps because of her detachment from the literary world and her tendency to mock it. Much of her work was long out of print before a modest revival in the 21st century.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Gibbons

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1757:

Louis XV of France survived an assassination attempt by Robert- François Damiens, who later became the last person to be executed in the country by drawing and quartering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens

1919:

The German Workers' Party, the forerunner to the Nazi Party, was founded by Anton Drexler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Workers%27_Party

1941:

Second World War: Australian and British troops defeated Italian forces in Bardia, Libya, the first battle of the war in which an Australian Army formation took part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bardia

1976:

The Troubles: In response to the killings of six Catholics the night before, the South Armagh Republican Action Force killed ten Protestants in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsmill_massacre

1991:

The United States Embassy to Somalia in Mogadishu was evacuated by helicopter airlift days after violence enveloped Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eastern_Exit

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

Twelfth Night: A Christian festival marking the coming of Epiphany and concluding the Twelve Days of Christmas, traditionally falling on the evening of January 5 (i.e., on the eve of Twelfth Day, January 6), but also sometimes defined as falling on the evening of January 6 (i.e., on the evening of Twelfth Day itself). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. If it had been possible he would have settled the matter otherwise, and without bloodshed. He doesn't boast of his own death or of others'. But he does not repent. He suffers and keeps his mouth shut; if anything, others then exploit him, making him a myth, while he, the man worthy of esteem, was only a poor creature who reacted with dignity and courage in an event bigger than he was.   --Umberto Eco https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco