 During the remainder of the 1930s Gibbons produced five more novels , as well as two poetry collections , a children 's book , and a number of short stories . From November 1936 the family home was in Oakshott Avenue , on the Holly Lodge Estate off Highgate West Hill , where Gibbons regularly worked in the mornings from ten until lunchtime . Her novels were generally well received by critics and the public , though none earned the accolades or attention that had been given to Cold Comfort Farm ; readers of The Times were specifically warned not to expect Gibbons 's second novel , Bassett ( 1934 ) , to be a repetition of the earlier masterpiece . <unk> Heath ( 1935 ) is a relatively faithful account of her childhood and early adult life with , according to Oliver , " only the thinnest veil of fictional gauze cover [ ing ] raw experience " . Miss Linsey and Pa ( 1936 ) was thought by Nicola Beauman , in her analysis of women writers from 1914 to 1939 , to parody Radclyffe Hall 's 1928 lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness . Gibbons 's final prewar novels were Nightingale Wood ( 1935 ) — " Cinderella brought right up to date " — and My American ( 1939 ) , which Oliver considers her most escapist novel , " a variant of Hans Christian Andersen 's The Snow Queen . " 
