EX LIBRIS
VINTAGE CLASSICS
TICKY
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 spent ten years working for various newspapers, including the Evening Standard. Stella Gibbons is the author of twentyfive 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 Heureuse Prize in 1933. Amongst 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.
ALSO BY STELLA GIBBONS
Cold Comfort Farm
Bassett
Enbury Heath
Nightingale Wood
My American
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm
The Rich House
The Bachelor
Westwood
The Matchmaker
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm
Here Be Dragons
White Sand and Grey Sand
The Charmers
Starlight
ST E LLA GIBBO NS Ticky
Published by Vintage 2011 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © Stella Gibbons 1943
Stella Gibbons has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in Great Britain by Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd in 1943
Vintage
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To 198380 and the rest of the British Army
‘There is, perhaps, no species of society so striking and so captivating to the young man entering on life as that of a military mess’
Ours, Charles Lever
‘There aren’t better stuff to make soldiers out of nowhere than Englishmen, God bless ’em! but they’re badgered, they’re horribly badgered’ Under Two Flags, Ouida
