 After the stifling experience of school , Gibbons found university exhilarating and made numerous friendships , particularly with Ida Graves , an aspiring poet who , although on a different course , attended some of the same lectures . The two shared a love of literature and a taste for subversive humour . Graves lived until 1999 , and recalled in an interview late in life that many of the jokes they shared found their way into Cold Comfort Farm , as did some of their common acquaintances . Soon after Gibbons began the course she contributed a poem , " The Marshes of My Soul " , to the December 1921 issue of University College Magazine . This parody , in the newly fashionable vers libre style , was her first published literary work . During the next two years she contributed further poems and prose to the magazine , including " The Doer , a Story in the Russian Manner " , which foreshadows her later novels in both theme and style . Gibbons completed her course in the summer of 1923 , and was awarded her diploma . 
