 Although Boston suggested that Gibbons 's rating in the academic English Literature world ought to be high , her literary status is indeterminate . She did not promote herself , and was indifferent to the attractions of public life : " I 'm not shy " , she told Oliver , " I 'm just unsociable " . Truss records that Gibbons had " overtly rejected the literary world ... she didn 't move in literary circles , or even visit literary squares , or love in literary triangles " . Truss posits further reasons why Gibbons did not become a literary canon . Because she was a woman who wrote amusingly , she was classified as " middlebrow " ; furthermore , she was published by Longmans , a non @-@ literary publisher . Her lampooning of the literary establishment in the spoof dedication of Cold Comfort Farm to one " Anthony Pookworthy " did not amuse that establishment , who were further offended by the book 's mockery of the writing of such canonical figures as Lawrence and Hardy — hence Virginia Woolf 's reaction to the Prix Étranger award . 
