The Wolves Were in the Sledge

by Stella Gibbons

377 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1964

About the author

Stella Dorothea Gibbons was an English novelist, journalist, poet and short-story writer.

Her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1933. A satire and parody of the pessimistic ruralism of Thomas Hardy, his followers and especially Precious Bain by Mary Webb -the "loam and lovechild" genre, as some called it, Cold Comfort Farm introduces a self-confident young woman, quite self-consciously modern, pragmatic and optimistic, into the grim, fate-bound and dark rural scene those novelists tended to portray.

Reviews

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seventeen year old Nancy narrates the story of her life with her husband Toby, twenty six, charming, and strongly averse to getting a regular job. He hopes to find a rich patron of some kind, and has the luck to be offered a job helping a very wealthy American couple trade their ancestors. Toby and Nancy have a very pleasant time taking the Rodes to visit various places in Hertfordshire in search of ancestors, the Roses are very generous and pay them well, and also buy them delightful dinners and take them to the theatre. But are the Rodes as innocent as they seem? Nancy is a charming mixture of innocence and sophistication, and her views on the people she knows and the things that happen to her and to Toby are very enjoyable. I thought the ending was a bit far fetched, but otherwise this is an enjoyable story with an endearing narrator.

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a bit of an oddity - distinctly creepy (though not fantastic) elements. Outside Gibbons' usual comfort zone perhaps, though she certainly did not keep writing the same book.