 The daughter of a London doctor , Gibbons had a turbulent and often unhappy childhood . After an indifferent school career she trained as a journalist , and worked as a reporter and features writer , mainly for the Evening Standard and The Lady . Her first book , published in 1930 , was a collection of poems which was well received , and through her life she considered herself primarily a poet rather than a novelist . After Cold Comfort Farm , a satire on the genre of rural @-@ themed " loam and lovechild " novels popular in the late 1920s , most of Gibbons 's novels were based within the middle @-@ class suburban world with which she was familiar . 
